The Weakest to the Strongest
by Strawberry9212
Summary: What happens when you put a weakling, a nuisance, and a monster on the same team? A kick-ass team, that's what. Hinata, Naruto, and Sakura have the opportunity to train with some of the best and they're not wasting any time to prove their worth. Watch out Konoha 'cause here comes your worst nightmares! Sorry! On HIATUS!
1. Chapter 1 Becoming New Parents

A/N: Man, I swear, I'm on a roll with new ideas for stories, and this one isn't going to be a oneshot, I thought of this one a while ago but I didn't develop it. So I finally developed it into a story and here it is. I hope you like it!

Chapter One - Becoming New Parents

Two figures watched as a small kid was being chased by a big mob that had torches, rakes, and even experienced shinobi. The two figures caught what some of them shouted, "Kill the demon!", "The demon shall sleep forever tonight!", "Be gone with that demon brat!", "That demon doesn't deserve to live!" The two figures looked straight across and saw another figure masked in the shadows, one of the figures nodded toward the lone figure.

The same three figures dashed through the night and stopped as they observed a small child being scolded, berated, degraded, and criticized by their father, the same two figures nodded once again to each other and ran towards their destination when once again they were stopped by an absurd scene.

They watched through a window as a little girl tried talking to her father but to no prevail as the father just shunned the girl away and ignored her, continuing on with his business writing mission reports. They watched as the little girl walked into the next room and tried talking to the mother but the mother was worse, she screamed at the child saying she was busy and that she had missions the next day. The girl begged her mom about something and the mom stood up, slapped the girl on the face and just turned back around not watching as that girl flew across the room, a bruise evidently forming.

After the figures watched this, they finally dashed madly to their destination, this time without any interruptions to their relief, they didn't want to watch anymore kids being abused, it would crush them.

**At the Hokage Tower**

The Sandaime was finishing his paper work for the day when the door to his office suddenly burst open and in came two of his old students with angry expressions and one of their apprentices tailing behind with a worried expression.

"Ah, what's the meaning of this reunion?" Sarutobi asked in an amused tone.

"Quit playing around old man, we demand to know why kids of this village are being abused?!" the one with the blond hair and big chest shouted as she slammed her palm down onto her old sensei's desk.

Sarutobi looked back at his old student with a confused expression.

"Don't give us that look, old man, were talking about the blond boy being chased around town by a mob, the Hyuuga heiress, and the Haruno girl with pink hair," the one with the long spiky white hair said as he leaned against one of the open windows.

"I only knew about Naruto, but I didn't know about the Hyuuga heiress and the Haruno heiress," Saurtobi responded back to his students.

"The pink-head is an heiress too, how could they treat her like that?!" the blond one, also known as Tsunade, screamed.

"How exactly were the heiresses being treated?" Sarutobi asked curiously serious.

"Well, since you know how the blond one was being treated, the Hyuuga heiress was being degraded by her own father and the Haruno heiress was being ignored and abused by both of her parents, saying that they had missions and they were busy. Why do you assign that many missions when you know that they have a family to raise?" the white-haired one, also know as Jiraiya asked.

"I only assigned them that many missions because I made sure that their daughter was happy and healthy. When I visited them to check, they were one happy family, so I couldn't deny their requests for more missions. Now that I know, I will decrease the amount of missions they get in a week, and they can only get B and lower rank missions. They Hyuuga heiress, its a shame really, she really kindhearted, not fit to become a battle field ninja, but she was born into a powerful clan, doomed to train for the rest of her life, and she's too kind to kill. She can't take the training, its just not meant for her but Hiashi doesn't care, its really sad, I can't do anything about that though," Sarutobi contemplated.

"If its going to be like that then can I take the heiresses away and train them myself along with my apprentice?" Tsunade asked, more like demanded, as her apprentice, the third figure took a step closer.

"I'll take the blond, I'm pretty sure that that is Minato's kid, housing the Kyuubi, to think that that kid can out run an angry mob that has civilians and experienced shinobis with adrenaline in their blood is saying a lot. I'm also guessing that it happens really often, I'm taking that kid with me on a training journey," Jiraiya stated.

Sarutobi pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration and let out a long breathe. "I'll let Jiraiya take Naruto and yes he is Minato's kid, but for Tsunade, you'll have to get their parents' consent before you can take them, but if the Haruno's are really as bad as you say they are, then you have my permission to take the girl forcibly."

Jiraiya grunted in response and jumped out of the window to retrieve his star pupil's legacy as Tsunade nodded with a determined expression on her face as she left the room as her apprentice, Shizune, trailed behind her.

**At the Poorer Side of the Vast Village.**

5 year-old Naruto was bunched up in a ball in a corner in his apartment, he was somehow able to ditch the angry mob that chased him around all the time. He jumped in his skin when someone knocked on his door. It took him a while to actually believe that someone actually knocked on the door and not kicked it down or something. So when he finally gathered up the courage and opened the door he was shocked to find an old man with long, spiky, white hair on his door step with a smile on his face.

Naruto stared up at the big giant that actually had a sincere smile on his face, the only person who would smile at him like that was the old man, but he hardly got to see him.

"Hey Naruto, how would you like to come with me on a seven year training journey, where I can teach you how to defend yourself and fight off that nasty mob?" the giant asked.

"You mean you can make me strong!" Naruto asked excitedly as the giant chuckled.

"I can teach you how you can become strong and trust me, I can tell that you will become a very strong person, why don't you and I go visit the Sandaime?" The giant invited.

"You mean that I get to see the old man?! Alright, I haven't seen him in like forever!" Naruto shouted excitedly as he opened his arms wide above his head to emphasize his point. The giant chuckled and picked up the child and they were suddenly in the old man's office.

**At the Hyuuga Complex**

Tsunade and Shizune approached the gates and demanded that they were to be let in to talk to the head about something urgent and confidential, they were immediately let in after that.

Hiashi was in his study when one of the legendary sannin suddenly burst into his room.

"What business do you have with me?" Hiashi asked calmly.

"The situation concerning how you treat your daughter," Tsunade replied, slightly angry.

"The way I treat my daughter is up to me and its none of your business," Hiashi shot back.

"I don't trust how you treat your daughter so I propose that I take your daughter on a training trip for seven years, and if you agree, then she won't be your heiress anymore," Tsunade said with a business like tone.

Hiashi paused for a while and asked, "Why would you want a worthless and useless child like that, she'll just be a nuisance, her sister has more potential than she does and she's only a baby."

"How could you say that about your own daughter and since you have that opinion of her then just give her to me and I'll be her guardian, taking the "the trouble" that she causes. I'll train her to her full potential, all you have to do is say yes and I'll take her out of your hands," Tsunade persuaded.

"Fine, take her tonight," Hiashi replied.

"Have her ready in an hour, I have other business to attend to first," Tsunade said as she left and waited as Shizune bowed to the cruel head of the legendary Hyuuga clan.

Once they left the complex and exited the gate, they headed towards the Haruno's, ready to deal with the bastard and bitch that were willing to abuse their own child physically.

**At the Haruno House**

Tsunade knocked on the door and she heard some yelling and crashes from the inside until the door finally opened to reveal the little girl with pink hair holding her elbow and standing on one leg, a bruise on her face where her mother had hit her earlier.

"Where's your mommy, sweetie?" Tsunade asked as she bent down to the little girl's eye level.

"Mommy says that shes busy and she doesn't have time for visitors," the girl replied.

"Really, but can you tell her that this is urgent, and can you tell daddy to come down too?" Tsunade said as she invited herself and Shizune in. The little ran up the stairs to tell her parents. Tsunade looked around and saw that the house was pretty clean and sanitary, to her relief, she walked back to the front hallway and stood there waiting.

The girl ran back down and said, "Mommy and daddy said to get lost and get out of their house."

"Haruno! Get down here before you anger one of the legendary SANNIN!!!" Tsunade shouted throughout the whole house.

In an instant there were footsteps heard from upstairs and Tsunade saw two people scrambling down the stairs.

"What brings Tsunade-hime into our house?" the mom asked in a sugar coated voice.

Tsunade sneered in discuss and said, "Is this how you treat your guests? If so, then you wouldn't even be able to qualify as householders."

"We don't know what you are talking about Tsunade-sama." the father said.

"Thats ridiculous, I'm hear to talk about the matter concerning how you treat your daughter," Tsunade stated.

"What business do you have with our daughter? We treat her perfectly fine," the mother replied.

"Thats not what I witnessed about an hour ago," Tsunade said as she glared at the parents.

"What do you mean?" the mother asked.

"I witnessed you causing this huge bruise on her face," Tsunade said as she pointed to the black bruised on the poor girl's face.

"I-I d-don't know w-what your t-talking about," the mother stuttered out.

"You can't lie to me, I, along with my apprentice and another Sannin saw it with our own eyes. You can't lie to save your life and you call yourself a ninja," Tsunade stated.

The mother broke down crying and choked out, "We never wanted a child, it just happened! We didn't want her! We didn't know what to do! We just wanted to be together and continue with the life that we had before but it just happened!"

"How could you say that?! She's your child! In that case, you wouldn't mind if I take custody of your daughter and take her on a seven year training trip?" Tsunade proposed once again.

The mother and father looked up to her and then looked at each other, they both nodded. Tsunade sneered at how fast they agreed, selfish bastards.

Tsunade then walked over to the little girl and bent down and asked, while she started healing the injuries the girl had, "Hey, sweetie, whats your name?"

"My name is Sakura," Sakura said as she watched in amazement as all the pain went away.

"Well, my name is Tsunade and I'm going to bring you on a training trip to learn how to do this. Do you want to learn how?" Tsunade said as she finished.

"Yes, yes, yes, this is sooo cool, can I? Mommy? Daddy?" Sakura asked as she looked up at who used to be her parents.

They both nodded their heads as Tsunade looked at the scene with a sad pitiful look.

"Why don't you get pack up, Shizune-nee-chan, will help you pack," Tsunade said as she showed who Shizune was, and watched as they walked up to the girl's room to pack.

Tsunade looked back at the parents who looked like they were about to cry. "I'll ask you one more time, are you willing to hand over custody to me and let me bring her on a training journey for 7 seven years," Tsunade said.

The mother nodded as tears threatened to fall, all three of them looked at the stairs as they heard footsteps on it and saw a happy little girl with a small backpack with a huge smile on her face. She was practically skipping down the stairs and stopped when she saw her mother with tears in her eyes.

"Whats wrong mommy? Why are you crying? Do you not want me to go? I can stay with you mommy, if you want me to," Sakura said as she looked up to her mother.

"No, no, its just that mother is really happy for you, no one else gets this opportunity, good luck and have fun," the mother replied as she bent down and hugged her child on last time.

"Its time to go now, say good bye to mommy and daddy," Tsunade said as she took one of Sakura's hand and led her to the door as Sakura waved goodbye. They exited the house as she looked back and saw the couple crying in each others arms, there was no turning back now. Now they had to go pickup the Hyuuga, her other new daughter.

**At the Hyuuga Complex**

Tsunade told the guards to bring the girl out and waited as they went and got her. They finally got back and the little girl walked up to them shyly.

Tsunade bent down and said, "Hey honey, what's your name?"

"H-Hinata," Hinata replied as she blushed, having all of the attention on her.

"Well, Hinata, let's go see the Hokage now," Tsunade said as she took one of her hands and started towards the Hokage tower.

**In the Hokage's Office.**

The door opened to reveal the blond that they saw earlier pouting, Sarutobi laughing, and a smiling Jiraiya.

"Ah, I see that you persuaded their parents, as expected, now fill out these forms," Sarutobi said as he handed the new mom a stack of papers who grumbled about stupid paper work.

That was when Sakura and Hinata started talking to each other and playing with the pet pig that their nee-chan was holding and was shyly looking as the cute little blond boy walked up towards them and tried to start a conversation. Tsunade finally finished the paper work and started discussing how long the trip would be.

"I'd say, seven years, until kids their age finish the academy and be put into teams, I still want they to be able to make friends their own age," Tsunade stated.

"I agree, as long as they come back for the grouping of teams, I say that its fine," Sarutobi agreed.

"I though the same, and I also thought that I would bring Naruto back when he's nine to take his exam and then leave for another three years, and this time with Tsunade's kids, to work on their teamwork," Jiraiya added, as the other two nodded in agreement.

"Well, let's get going," Tsunade said as she took both of her daughters' hand and walked out the door as Jiraiya told his son to follow him and bid goodbye to the Sandaime, who bid goodbye and good luck to the new parents.

Sarutobi wondered how they were going to turn out, well, he's going to have to have four years to the outcome.

A/N: I hope you liked it, I'll update this when I have time to write another chapter because I have another idea that I was to write about so I don't know how that is going to go. Please check out my other stories and once again I say, I hope you liked it and please review, every writer loves reviews!!!


	2. Chapter 2 Four Years Later

A/N: Here's the second chapter! I hope you liked the first and I hope you like this chapter, please enjoy.

Chapter Two - Four Years Later

**4 Years Later**

The guards that were on watch watched as six figures walked up to the gates and bowed in respect for two of the people that were part of the group and returned to their job.

"Ahh, its been so long since we've been in the village. I wonder if anything has changed, I guess not 'cause everything is the same," one of the figures that had pink hair said.

"Yeah, everything looks smaller," the figure that had short blond hair said.

"Of course, its because we grew but everything still looks the same," the figure that had long, waist-length, midnight blue hair that was done in a french braid.

"Come on, let's go visit the Sandaime," the figure with long blond hair in two pigtails said as they started towards the Hokage tower.

**At the Hokage Tower**

Sarutobi was in the middle of doing the mounds of paperwork that he had to get done that day when the door burst open to reveal six familiar faces.

"Ah, back from the first part of the training trip are we? Are you ready to become a real ninja?" Sarutobi asked.

"Of course, old man!" the one that he recognized as Naruto shouted.

"Not with that voice volume, you alert everyone that you are there within a 50 meter radius," the one that he recognized as Sakura the Haruno heiress said.

"I'm sure that the people closer to him would go deaf," the one that he identified as the ex-Hyuuga heiress said as Naruto crossed his arms, pouted, and mumbled on about something along the lines of meanie smart asses.

"So, all you need to do is fill out these forms for your kids and they'll be ready to test in a week," Sarutobi said as he handed the forms to the two parents.

They received the papers as they mumbled something along the lines of stupid paperwork. The two finished the paperwork and gave it back to the Hokage.

"Come on, we need to find a hotel to stay at," Tsunade said as she shooed the kids towards the door.

They finally found a hotel to stay at and the girls begged their mom to let them go shopping and after a while of begging, Tsunade finally complied and gave them some money. Hinata and Sakura rushed out of the hotel as soon as they got the money.

**Around the Many Shops in the Village**

First, they visited a shop for clothes and bought quite a lot of clothes that were stylish, comfortable, and convenient when in a battle. They were actually smart about what to wear, unlike girls that were ninjas and complained about broken nails and not doing any work on a mission because it would ruin their outfits.

They finally went into a weapons shop when they each had two bags of clothes in each hand. They each used a wide range of weapons since they were flexible about what they used since they were trained in the medical field, but they also loved fighting and weapons.

When they were buying the weapons that they picked out, they saw a girl of ten with brown hair that was in two buns who they thought was cute. The girls were walking back to the hotel when they passed by a flower shop that had amazing aromas coming from it. So they walked into the shop and took in the many smells and was suddenly interrupted when someone talked to them.

They looked up towards the counter and saw a little girl with blond hair and blue eyes talking to them. They walked up to the counter and started talking.

"Hey, I've never seen you two around before, where did you come from?" the girl asked.

"Well, we were born here but were left to go on a journey trip thing when we were 5, so yeah. We didn't know anyone then, so it would explain why," Sakura explained.

"Oh, I guess so. So, where did you go on your trip?" the girl asked.

"We went to a lot of places, so many that I lost count. Oh well, it was really fun though," Hinata responded.

"Sorry, to cut our meeting short but we have to go now, bye," Sakura said as they bid goodbye, waved to each other and started their way back to the hotel.

**At the Hotel**

As they entered the hotel room their onee-chan asked, "What did you guys buy today?"

"Well, we bought new clothes that look nice, are comfortable, durable, and convenient, oh and we bought new weapons," Sakura said as they set down the bags that they were carrying.

"Cool, how much did you spend?" Tsunade asked.

"We didn't spend all of it, we still have some left," Hinata said as she took out the money and quickly put it back as Tsunade tried to snatch. "And no, you are not going to spend it on sake and gambling, okaa-san."

Tsunade grumbled on and on as Shizune congratulated Hinata for preventing Tsunade from continuing her bad habits.

"Can we go to an onsen?" Hinata asked.

"Sure, as long as cover ourselves from that perverted bastard," Tsunade said as they got ready to go to one of the local onsen.

**At the Onsen**

"Ah, this feels so good, its been forever since we've done some thing this relaxing," Sakura said as she relaxed in the hot water.

Hinata flinched as she felt a perverted vibe from somewhere and took one of the extra senbon that she had in her hair just for this kind situation and shot it in the direction where she got the vibe from. Then she heard a pained scream and a huge crash and felt satisfied.

After a while they finally got out and got dressed. When they walked out of the onsen they saw an old man with long spiky, white hair on the ground clutching his family jewels that had a senbon sticking out of it.

The four females walked up to him and stared at him as he writhed in pain, they looked up at Hinata who nervously laughed and then they congratulated her for her accomplishment, she had taken down the legendary frog sannin with one shot and at the age of 9 years-old no less.

**At a Bookstore Somewhere on the Other Side of the Village**

"Get out you little brat, this is an adult bookstore!" was heard when a small kid with blond hair burst through the front door and started running for his life, his research was complete! One of the many things that he learned with his stay with the frog sannin was that he was on mega pervert.

He would always sneak away during their training to continue his "research" and leave Naruto to try a new technique by himself, so he decided to create a jutsu to prevent his sensei from leaving him and to have him wrapped around his finger.

Naruto ran until he made it into the middle of one of the many forests, and stopped to catch his breath. He got ready and tried to perform his jutsu, after awhile he stopped and grinned, success. It was perfect, now he had to find the opportunity to us it against the ero-sannin as Naruto called him.

Just after that one technique, he felt so much more powerful against the sannin and went to find that mega pervert. Naruto went directly to the hot springs district and found him immediately. Naruto burst out laughing as he saw the legendary sannin on the ground, bunched up in a ball and clutching his family jewels, Naruto really had to thank the person who did this to him.

**A Week Later**

**At the Academy**

Everyone was jittery, excited, and nervous for today was the academy exam, the one that determined whether or not you were fit to become a ninja

The instructor stepped in an told the class to quiet down, he also told them that three new students would be joining them today, only for the exam. As the instructor said that, three kids that were around the age of nine walked in. There were two girls and one boy.

The boy had short, wild, blond hair, cerulean eyes, tan skin, three marks on each cheek, and a slender build. He wore an orange and blue jump suit, standard blue ninja sandals, and black ninja gloves.

One of the girls had long, waist-length, midnight blue hair that was done in a French braid, her bangs framed her face with a left side part, and she had pearly eyes with a hint of lavender and no pupils. She wore a light green Chinese style t-shirt (like Tenten's but with small sleeves) and black, slightly baggy, knee-length caprice.

The other girl had shoulder length, bubble gum pink hair that was tied back with a red ribbon, making her bangs frame her face and emerald green eyes. She wore a red, Chinese kimono style dress with slits on the side, revealing black, spandex, track shorts underneath.

All of the students started complaining and said things like, "They look so young!", "We've never seen them before!", "They've never been to the academy, how can they take the exam?!", "How could they become ninjas, they're so ugly!"

Sakura and Hinata twitched at the last comment, they were going up against these brainless idiots? The real question is can THEY become ninjas with that attitude of theirs.

"Quiet, there is no need for this ruckus, they are well prepared for this exam. I'm pretty sure that they are even better than some of the ones in here and to whoever shouted that last comment, looks don't matter in the shinobi world. Calm down so we can start the test," the instructor said as everyone started to settle down.

The three took a seat somewhere in the classroom and waited for their name to be called.

"Haruno Sakura."

Sakura got up and and walked to the next room as someone came out with a sad expression. When Sakura entered the room she was greeted by a three panel judge.

"We would like you to demonstrate kawarimi," one of the instructors said as Sakura immediately performed the jutsu and watched from the position that she switched to as the instructor threw a kunai at what seemed to be her to reveal another student who seemed clueless to what had happened. Sakura walked back into the room as the other student walked back out with a confused expression.

"Please create three bunshins," one of the instructors said as Sakura formed the seals and created three bunshins, each with there own pose and dispelled them as the instructors chuckled.

The last instructor got up and walked towards Sakura as he said, "Now to demonstrate your taijutsu, you'll have to land 5 hits on me in 15 minutes." Sakura nodded with a smirk in her face and dropped into her stance. The spar commenced as one of the other instructors raised a hand and dropped it. Sakura suddenly disappeared from her spot and then reappeared as the instructor stayed in place and suddenly fell to his hands and knees, coughing out blood and then collapsed.

The other instructors rushed to see what had happened and turned the fallen one around to reveal 5 horizontal footsteps all along the torso, one to the stomach, one to the solar plexus, one to the collar bone, one to the neck, and one to the face. It seemed that five lethal blows were delivered in quick succession, all under a second. Sakura grinned and gave a peace sign as the other instructors looked up at her from their crouched position.

They returned to there seat, wrote down some things and handed a hiate ite to Sakura who received it and bowed. Sakura walked back to the other room as she heard her sister being called in.

Hinata walked into the room after Sakura left and was greeted with an instructor slowly getting up from the floor with 5 visible footsteps on his front-side. Hinata covered her mouth and giggle as she knew that Sakura loved using that move.

Hinata switched with Sakura for the kawarimi, created three bunshin, each doing different katas, and got ready as she faced the instructor for the taijutsu portion. She quickly disabled ten of the tenkutsus in his right arm and received her hiate ite as the instructor groaned in pain.

Hinata exited the room as another student was called into the other room. Hinata joined Sakura as she tied the newly gained hiate ite loosely around her neck and saw that Sakura had changed the red ribbon that was in her hair with the hiate ite. The two laughed as they told each other what they did to the poor instructor for the taijutsu.

It was finally Naruto's turn as they watched the blond walk into the other room. Naruto switched with the instructor that was bruised and had a limp arm for the kawarimi, created 3 kage bunshins that were each doing a different exercise, and for the taijutsu, he did a similar move to Sakura's except it was punching, not kicking, and he punched right where Sakura had kicked, much to the instructors dismay who groaned in pain.

Naruto received his hiate ite and happily walked back into the other room as the instructors followed. Naruto was congratulated by Hinata and Sakura as he tied the hiate ite around his forehead. They listened as the instructors spoke," I am happy to congratulate the ones that have passed and I'm disappointed in the ones that didn't, more than half the class didn't. But there's still next year, so train hard and you'll most likely be able to pass."

The girls then started complaining that it was wasn't fair that the two girls passed and they didn't, they thought that it should've been who became ninjas and not the girls 3 years their junior.

Hinata and Sakura sneered in disgust as they exited the room after being dismissed, how did the instructor put up with people like that?

**At the Hotel**

The door open as two new kunoichi stepped in and was congratulated by their nee-san.

"Congratulation, you two, how was it?" Shizune asked.

"It was easy, no competition," Sakura said as she plopped down on her bed.

"Really there wasn't, there were only big-headed, stupid girls that didn't know the meaning of being a ninja. They thought that just 'cause they were so called 'prettier than us' that they deserved to be a ninja more. I mean, come on, they were ugly and if it _was_ a beauty pageant, we would've won, hands down," Hinata said as she sat down on her bed and played with their pet pig, Tonton.

"I couldn't agree more, I went to give them a lecture a few days ago and they were so rowdy that they resemble a pig sty at feeding time," Tsunade said as she scoffed.

"Get packed girls, we leave at sunset," Tsunade instructed as she started packing herself.

**In the Hokage's Office**

Sarutobi was taking a break from the endless paper work when his door opened to reveal his favorite group, three with newly gained hiate ites. Sarutobi greeted them with a smile as he saw that they were all packed and ready to go.

"I'm guessing that you are going to leave soon and will come back in three years?" Sarutobi asked.

"Yup, old man and this time were going to go as a team!," Naruto shouted in excitement.

"We'll be back in three years to have them grouped into teams with people in their age group," Tsunade said as they got ready to leave.

"Well, see you in three years, old man," Jiraiya bid goodbye to Sarutobi as they left the office and headed towards the gate, leaving one more time.

A/N: I hope you liked it, I'm mostly likely going to start on the third chapter soon, so look forward to it. Please check out my other stories and please review!!!


	3. Chapter 3 Three Years Later

A/N: I'm here to update once again, I'm seriously on a roll with my updating, this is probably like my record, updating the same story three times in three days, I swear, it probably is my record. Well, please read it and I hope you like it! Please review!

Chapter 3 – Three Years Later

**Three Years Later**

"Ah, this village always looks so different after we come back, but yet, nothing has changed," Naruto said as he looked around in amazement.

"You idiot, that's just you," Sakura said as she bonked him on the head.

"Ahh, Sakura-chan why do you always hit me?" Naruto whined as he clutched his newly formed bruise.

"It's 'cause you deserve it, you idiot, your always like this," Hinata said as she shook her head.

Over the three years, they had trained as a team, a force to be reckoned with. If you broke the team down into their specialties and their strengths, then Naruto would be the ninjutsu specialist, Sakura would be the genjutsu specialist, and Hinata would be the taijutsu specialist.

They were a perfect team, they worked together perfectly, but they still didn't know whether or not they were going to become an official team, they hoped that they did, they had really become best friends over the years.

They all walked towards the Hokage Tower for their usual visit to the Sandaime when they returned to the village.

**In the Hokage's Office**

"Ah, your finally back, how was your trip?" Sarutobi asked the group as they walked in.

"It was soooo awesome," Naruto shouted in response.

"It was cool," Sakura added.

"It was fun," Hinata said with a smile.

"Hey, old man, guess what?" Jiraiya asked.

"What?" Sarutobi asked.

"These three make an awesome team, they work really well together, it was like they were meant to be a team," Jiraya replied.

"Well, that's good to hear, now all we have to see is whether or not they get onto the same team. I'll have to discuss that with the council and see what happens," Sarutobi said.

"When are we going to be put into teams?' Sakura asked.

"Well, the kids your age are taking their exam tomorrow, so that means that they'll be put into teams the day after," Sarutobi said.

"Sandaime-sama, I was wondering if we could go and observe the kids during their exam tomorrow and see what were going to be teamed with if not with each other," Hinata requested.

"Sure, I was about to suggest that, you have special permission to observe them tomorrow, I'll talk to Iruka about that," Sarutobi said.

"Cool, now we get to see if they were as bad as the year that we took our exam. Blech, they were horrible, I can't believe that some of them passed," Sakura said as she made a face.

"Thankfully, this year is a lot better than that year. There was only one team that became an official team that year," Sarutobi stated.

"Thank god, if we had to team up with them, we might as well keep the team that we have now," Naruto said with a sigh of relief.

"Oh my god, Naruto just said something intelligent," Sakura gasped out as she and Hinata stared in mock amazement. Naruto mumbled on about meanie smart asses.

Sarutobi chuckled at the scene in front of him, it was truly de ja vu, he was glad to see that none of them had become power hungry and stayed the same.

"Do you have a place that we can stay at?" Tsunade asked.

"Of course, I have prepared two houses for you guys, all you need to do is fill out these forms," Sarutobi said as he handed the forms to his two ex-students and held back a laugh at their displeasure.

"What's with these retarded paper work every time we give a visit to you?!" Tsunade shouted as she filled the forms out.

"Let's go girls, we need to get settled down and ready for tomorrow, Tsunade commanded as she turned in the paperwork as Jiraiya gasped at how quick she had finished with the freaking 1-inch stack of flattened and processed dead trees

**At the House.**

It was a pretty big house with four master bedrooms, one guest/smaller master bedroom, four levels, two above the ground and two below, a total of 5 1/2 bathrooms, a full kitchen with an island in the middle, a dining room, a living room, a dojo, and one private study.

That was only on the inside, on on the outside was an outdoor hot spring, a vast training field, along with the surrounding forest, and a medium sized lake made it an ideal training site, which was all towards the back of the house.

Tsunade smirked as Shizune, Hinata, and Sakura gasped in shock at how big it was, maybe not Hinata as much, but its been a long time and where she used to live was only one level and wide spread.

All four master bedrooms, with a full bathroom each, were on the top floor, on the ground floor there was the kitchen, dining room, living room, the guest room with it's own full bathroom, and a ½ bathroom, while the dojo was on the first floor below the ground and the basement under that.

Sakura and Hinata rushed into the house to claim their rooms as Shizune giggled and Tsunade continued to smirk at their excitement. When Tsunade and Shizune finally walked into the house, Sakura and Hinata had already claimed their rooms and started to explore the rest of the house with curiosity.

It was about after an hour that the pair finally seemed to calm down.

"This place is huge!" Sakura shouted.

"It's so cool," Hinata said as she controlled her excitement. 

"I'm glad that you like it, it was your great-grandfathers, I'm glad that its still in tip-top shape," Tsunade said satisfied.

"Really, this was the Shodaime's?" Shizune asked.

"Yeah, I always loved this house when I was younger, I loved jumping on the big beds in the bedrooms, its has always been one of my guilty pleasures," Tsunade said as she reminisced in old memories.

"Really? I gotta try that later," Sakura said.

"I advise that you don't and you three should start preparing dinner," Tsunade said.

"Mou mou, okaa-san, how come you never cook?" Hinata asked as she pouted.

"Because if I did, you would die before you even taste it from the poisonous fumes that it emits," Tsunade said in an all-knowing tone.

The three laughed as they started to prepare for dinner and continued to talk about their discoveries that they found in the house on their mini explorations. The makeshift family finally sat down to a delicious dinner and after they finished, they started to clean things up.

After they finally cleaned up the table and put away the now clean dishes, they went to do their own things until Tsunade decided that they train for awhile and the other three agreed.

They walked out back onto the vast training field and the four paired up for a warm-up spar. Tsunade vs. Sakura and Shizune vs. Hinata. After awhile of sparring they switched partners and started again. They finally finished and Tsunade started training Sakura and Hinata with Shizune helping along the way.

They finally called it quits around nine, went back in and started getting ready for bed, the two junior ninjas were excited about the next day.

**At the Academy**

Everyone was nervous and jittery, so nervous that they were oblivious to the three unknown figures in the back of the classroom, except for a select few that were calm and collected.

The instructor who had his hair in a high pony tail and a scar across the bridge of his nose walked in and calmed the class down as he explained the exam. As the exam started, Hinata started gathering information about their future teammates as they observed their performance using Byakugan, her clan's kekkai genkai, a doujutsu.

After each student came back from the other room, Hinata relayed the information to the other two as they recorded it down for later uses. When they were finally done with all of the students, surprisingly all of them had passed, the three of them wondered if almost half of them were able to survive in the real world as a ninja.

After the students were dismissed, the three stayed behind, upset that no one acknowledged their existence. They were either too naive, too nervous, or too quiet to acknowledge them. The three of them sighed, they could already tell that they were going to have trouble with some of them if they became an official team.

**The Next Day**

Everyone entered the classroom, excited to see who they were going to be teamed up with, still oblivious to the three figures in towards the back of the class. Some of the girls were arguing over who would be able to sit with a boy that the three recognized as the last Uchiha. 

Sakura was so annoyed that she almost interrupted in their arguments when Hinata held her back and said that ninjas don't show emotions. Sakura calmed down immediately, turning emotionless as Hinata and Naruto, all three giving off a professional atmosphere, even though still no one acknowledged their presence.

When the same instructor from the previous day came in and once again congratulated everyone, he started announcing the teams, some cheered and some groaned at who was in their team.

"Team 7 consists of Uchiha Sasuke," the instructor started as everyone tensed up to see who was on his team. "...Haruno Sakura, and Uzumaki Naruto," the instructor finished as everyone was wondering who the the top rookie's new teammates were.

The instructor continued not noticing all of the confusion.

"Team 8 consists of Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, and Hyuuga Hinata," the instructor announced, once again causing confusion about the third teammate.

"And the last team is Team 10 which consists of Nara Shikamaru, Akimichi Choji, and Yamanaka Ino," the instructor finished.

"Iruka-sensei, who were the two people in team seven and the last person in team eight?" one of the students asked.

"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, they're kids your age but they received their hiate ite when they were nine. They went on a journey for three years, since they wanted to be teamed up with people their age. Besides, the year that they became ninjas, there weren't that many people that passed, so it wouldn't have been good to team them up with people like that. I heard that some of them who didn't graduate that one year, finally graduated last year," the instructor, known as Iruka explained.

"Are the three people here now?" one of them asked.

"Its really disappointing to know that you haven't acknowledged our presence for two days. We've been here since yesterday, yet no one said anything, its really sad, knowing that you could possibly become our teammates. If we were enemy nin on a mission, you would have been dead before you knew it, sadly its true," Sakura said in a matter-of-factly tone as she finally got people to turn in their direction to see them for the first time.

"Which one of you is Haruno Sakura?' asked one of the girls that were fighting over who got to sit next to the last Uchiha.

"That would be me and you would be?" Sakura asked back.

"How could someone so ugly be able to be in a team with Sasuke-kun?!" the girl shouted.

"Its because, your stupid and shouldn't have been able to even receive that hiate ite yesterday. I was surprised when you came back into the room with one," Sakura retorted back.

"I answered both of your questions, but you didn't answer mine, who might you be?" Sakura asked once again.

"I'm Uchiha Ami, Sasuke-kun's wife," the girl replied confidently.

"Really? Never heard of you and if you _are_ his wife then how come you don't bear the Uchiha fan on any part of your clothing and why would you have to fight with the other girls to sit next to him if they know that he belongs to you?" Sakura asked.

"Well, t-that's b-because, th-their jealous," Ami stuttered out.

"You still haven't confirmed the clothing part, you are not his wife obviously. If you had a mission to pretend to be someone else, you would have been found out immediately. Thank kami I didn't get teamed up with you, but that would be impossible, seeing that each team only has one girl, I'm glad for that," Sakura said.

"Sakura, I told you not to pick any fights and what are you doing now?" Hinata asked with her tone full of authority.

"Mou mou, she started it. Oh well, what a waste of my time, where are the team leaders anyways?' Sakura wondered.

"They'll be here right about now," Iruka said as the door opened to reveal a couple of Jounins.

Most of the teams were picked up except for seven and eight.

"Too bad Hinata-chan, we couldn't be in the same team together," Naruto said.

"Well, it was fun working together in the past three years, it would've been cool if we became an official team, we would've kicked ass," Sakura said.

"Yeah, oh well, it seems like my new sensei is here," Hinata said as a Jounin that had wavy black hair and blood red eyes call for their team.

Finally, it was only Team 7 left as they waited for their really late sensei, wondering where the heck he or she was, either way, Naruto was planning to prank them.

So the three spent the next three hours waiting for their super late sensei and Sakura watching in amusement as she watched Naruto plan his prank, this was going to be gold.

A/N: I was going to add more to the chapter but I didn't expect it to be this long, so I decided to end it somewhere else and pick up from it in the beginning of the next chapter. Well, I hope you liked it, please review!


	4. Chapter 4 The New Team

A/N: Sorry that it took so long for me to update I just had a short writer's block for the past week and I've been busy with practice and taking my naps so that I wouldn't be so sleepy during class and that I make it to practice on time. Well, here's chapter four, I hope you like it!

Chapter 4 – The New Team

Sakura, Naruto and their new teammate continued waiting for their new sensei and watched as Naruto put a plan together. Naruto just finished setting up his prank when the door to the classroom opened and in came a Jounin that had silver gravity-defying hair, a face mask, and a hiate ite worn in a fashion that is covered his left eye.

The fact that he opened the door put Naruto's prank/trap into motion as the opening door pulled some chakra strings that caused multiple kunais, positioned on the other side of the room, to be released. They shot straight at their new sensei in a horizontal row of 5 kunai around the head/neck level and another set of 5 kunais were positioned to hit the stomach area and another row was positioned to hit the knee area.

As the kunais were about to reach their new sensei, a smoke bomb was released and then they heard a small explosion from the hall side. Once the smoke from the smoke bomb cleared up, they were met with a scene of the teacher standing in a defensive position with two kunais in each hand, all of the kunais that were launched at him were embedded on the wall and door around him, and everything else seemed normal, at least to the Uchiha it did, Naruto and Sakura knew otherwise.

"Meet me up on the roof for our first meeting," their new leader said as he disappeared from the spot that he was standing at.

Sakura and Naruto held their laughter as they walked up the stairs to the roof of the academy with the Uchiha behind them.

**On the Academy Roof**

The new Team 7 arrived on the roof to see their new sensei sitting on the railing, reading an orange book that Sakura and Naruto twitched at the site of. When they took a seat on some stairs their sensei put the book away and set his attention to his new team.

"So, let's start on introductions," the man said.

"You start first, sensei," Sakura said.

"Okay, my name is Hatake Kakashi. I have no desire to tell you guys about my likes and dislikes. Dreams for future...? Hmmm... Well, I have lots of hobbies...," Kakashi introduced.

The three team mates sweatdropped, they only learned his name.

"Okay, blondie, you start," Kakashi said as he pointed to Naruto.

"Yo, my name is Uzumaki Naruto, I like to train, learn new jutsus, I like to play with different types of seals, and I love ramen. I hate retarded people, people who only care about themselves, and the three minutes it takes to cook ramen. My hobbies are to train, hang out with my friends, create and experiment with seals, and play pranks on people. My dream is to be the strongest ninja in the world," Naruto finished with an air of determination around him.

"Pinkie, you next," Kakashi said as he thought, 'Interesting.'

"Ohayo, Haruno Sakura here, I like to learn new jutsus, heal people, train, hang out with my friends, cook, and help people out. I hate retarded people, people who only care about themselves, people who are arrogant, bitchy, mean, and who discriminate against others. My hobbies are learning new jutsus, reading, cooking, training, and hanging out with my friends. My dream is to surpass shishou, and become the greatest medic nin, " Sakura said proudly.

"You, brooding one, go," Kakashi said as he though, 'She wants to surpass Tsunade-hime, I'm pretty sure that she is well on her way.'

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke. There are tons of things I dislike but I don't really like anything. And... I don't want to use the word "dream" but... I have an ambition. The resurrection of my clan and...to kill a certain man." Sasuke said as he had a murderous and hateful look in his eyes.

'Great, I have three geniuses, and only two of them seem to get along,' Kakashi thought and said, "Okay meet me the training ground for survival training."

"I don't know about that guy over there, but I'm certain that Sakura and I have had plenty of that. Why do we need it again?" Naruto said as he pointed over to Sasuke.

"I'm certain that the two of you have had lots of it and that Sasuske had it at the academy but mine is different," Kakashi said as he chuckled.

"Well, at least we know that nothing can be worst than Jiraiya-sensei's and shishou's training," Sakura said.

"Well, let me tell you this, there is a 66.6% failing rate, there are 27 academy graduates, only 9 can become real ninjas, we'll meet at 5 am, so don't be late. Oh, and I advise you not to eat breakfast," Kakashi as he poofed away.

Sakura and Naruto weren't all that shocked since they've heard about something like this before. They weren't so sure of the emotionless prick on their team but Sakura and Naruto were confident that they were going to pass and become a real team.

**The Next Day**

All three of them appeared at the training ground and waited for their new sensei. As time passed, Sakura and Naruto started warming up as Sasuke just sat there, waiting.

"It's best if you start warming up, Uchiha-san. We know that we'll be training so if you don't warm up properly then you'll strain your body and muscles, causing pain and discomfort, during and after the training," Sakura suggested as she continued stretching, she practically looked like a pretzel.

It was then that Sasuke started warming up and stretched everything out.

By the time Kakashi finally got to the training grounds, they were all warmed-up and pissed off at there all-time late sensei.

"I see that you are all warmed up and fired up, so I'll start explaining how my training goes," Kakashi said as he held up two bells that were attached to two short strings.

"There are two bells, you have until noon to steal them from me, I've already set a timer that will ring at noon," Kakashi explained.

"But, there are only two bells and there are three of us," Sakura stated.

"Exactly, that would mean that at least one of you gets sent back to the academy, the failure will be tied to that pole while I eat your lunch in front of you," Kakashi said as the other three thought, 'That's why he told us to not eat breakfast.'

"Also, the only way that you will win against me is that you come at me with an intent to kill," Kakshi explained as he attached the bell to his belt.

"You will start on my command," Kakashi started as the three got ready to begin. "Start!" Kakashi shouted as the three disappeared from in front of him.

'First thing for a shinobi is to be able to hide yourself, it seems like they got that down, I can't even tell where Sakura and Naruto are at, Sasuke didn't completely mask all of his chakra, gotta work on that,' Kakashi thought as he pulled out a familiar orange book.

Sakura and Naruto met up as they spiked their chakra a bit to find each other and when they found each other, they completely hid it and moved to another location. they went to find Sasuke as they both thought of a plan to go against their new sensei.

By the time they found Sasuke, Sakura had a plan ready and discussed it with the others after they explained what the real meaning of the test was.

Kakashi felt the spike of chakra and found them immediately but suspected that they were smart enough not to stay in the same location. All of a sudden he heard front steps from the front and looked up from his book to see Naruto charging at him head on with a kunai in hand and Kakashi got ready to defect the kunai.

But all of a sudden Naruto poofed away and Kakashi realized that it was a shadow clone, but he was wrong when it sudden poofed back into existence in front of his face and slashed across it. He thought he blocked it but he felt pain in his right eye.

When he was still recovering from the pain, he heard someone shout a jutsu and looked to his right to see Sasuke launch a fire jutsu. Kakashi quickly formed seals and sunk into the ground. Sasuke stopped the jutsu and saw that his sensei was replaced with a burnt up log. He was suddenly pulled downward and before he knew it, only his head was above the ground with Kakashi crouching in front of him.

Kakashi walked towards the middle and looked for the 2nd and 3rd team mate, he still hasn't seen Sakura in action and from the report that he got from Tsunade and Jiraiya that she was really fast and a genjutsu specialist. Damn, he almost forgot that and calculated the fact that the Naruto clone dispersed and then reappeared, that couldn't have been shunshin, right?

Kakashi form a seal and then said, "Kai," as he cut off all his senses and watch as everything stayed the same except Sasuke's head wasn't in the ground anymore and he heard the sound of bells from behind him.

Kakashi turned around to see the team standing together with Naruto in the middle, Sakura on his right holding a bell, and Sasuke on his left holding the second bell.

"Congratulations to you two on getting a bell, Naruto you're going to get tied to the poll," Kakashi said.

"What the hell are you talking about sensei? All three of us pass! There can't be a two man team! You said that 9 pass, so that would mean three three-man teams, and you wouldn't break up teams and form others, because the original teams were put together strategically. Besides the meaning of this test was teamwork and that's exactly what we did," Naruto explained as he crossed his arms and stood confidently.

Kakashi was shocked to say the least, they had totally figured out what his test was about in the short amount of time they had completed it. He guessed that Sakura and Naruto got if first and then looked for Sasuke, since he was sure that he only thought about himself and killing that man.

"Then, congratulations to all three of you, my mistake. I'm impressed, you're the first team that actually understood what the meaning of the test was. Real ninjas are supposed to be able to see the underneath the underneath, many academy graduates would only fight for themselves and their team would fail. I congratulate you three again on becoming my first team, Team 7," Kakashi said as the other three were shocked, they were his first team?! All the others failed?! Just how strict was this guy and just how stupid were the others?!

"Meet up at the red bridge near the training grounds tomorrow morning at 8 to start missions, I have to go do something right now, you're dismissed," Kakashi said as he walked away.

Sakura burst out laughing when Kakashi turned around, from what was on his back. It was from the prank yesterday, it was a bright red kanji for idiot on the middle of the back of his vest, it was from the bomb. Sakura cracked up every time she saw it.

"Let's go meet up with Hinata, we told her that we would meet up with her at her training grounds after we were done with our team stuff," Sakura said as she led the way with Naruto following and Sasuke going his own way, he had nothing to do with it.

When they arrived at the training grounds for Team 8, they saw that they were finishing things up and saw the sensei talking to the team. After they were done Hinata walked towards them and they stayed for a while, talking about what had happened and congratulated each other for becoming an official team.

As the three of them stood there, a pair of red eyes watched them carefully and examined them from a far. 'So this is the team that they were talking about. If they really are what they're said to be, then they would be a force to be reckoned with. I wonder why they didn't become a team, must have been the council, wanting strong people on the same team as the Uchiha, and since Hinata has the Byakugan, she would have fit perfectly with the team that she is in now,' Kurenai thought as the three of them suddenly connected eyes with her and disappeared from sight.

That surprised Kurenai, it didn't seem like they were paying attention to their surroundings, but she guessed wrong, and all three of them knew shunshin. If all three of them did it at once without knowing where there destination was in advance then that would mean that the each of them have really good chakra sensing abilities, to be able to follow it at the speed of the shunshin requires.

All three of them appeared in front of the stand that Naruto was constantly babbling about, Ichiraku, a ramen stand. They had decided before that they were going to come here to celebrate their success in becoming a team, even though it was not with their original but with other people.

As they entered the stand, they met with the other team that seemed to have a chance to pass. The three of them sat down and ordered as the blond in the other team stared at them.

"If you are going to stare, then don't do it so openly, I'm not Uchiha-san." Sakura said without turning her head.

The blond pouted and turned back to her food as Sakura and the other two continued to wait for their food and started eating as it finally came.

It was when they were getting up to leave when the blond suddenly shouted, "Wait!"

The three of them turned around to see what she wanted and stood there as the blond walked up to Sakura and Hinata.

"I knew that you looked familiar, you two were the ones that came into my family's flower shop three years ago, it was around the time of the academy graduation. Do you remember? We talked for a bit and then you had to leave," the blond explained.

"Ah, we also thought that you looked familiar, Yamanaka Ino-san, was it?" Sakura asked.

"Yep, how did you know?" Ino asked.

"We were there during the graduation exam and the announcing of the teams, my name's Haruno Sakura," Sakura introduced.

"Hyuuga Hinata," Hinata said as she bowed slightly.

"Yo, Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto said as he held up a peace sign.

"Nara Shikamaru, troublesome," the pineapple head brunette mumbled.

"Akimichi Choji," the round one said as he took out a bag of chips and stated eating them.

"Nice to meet you all, but we have to go now, hope that we can talk another time," Sakura said as they started walking in the opposite direction.

A/N: Well, there you go, chapter four. I hope that you liked it, sorry that its kinda late, but for a while I didn't really have any ideas, and for this one, I was making up as I went, well, I always do that but, yeah. I hope you check out my other stories, I should have a new chapter up for one of the stories called That Bastard!, by the time that I have this chapter up. Well, I hope that you like it, please review!


	5. Chapter 5 Old Allies

A/N: Well, here it is, chapter five, I hope you like it. This story is going pretty well, I hope that it continues to thrive like it is right now, this is probably my second best story, it might even my best story; well, I'll let you guys decide that. Here it is, please enjoy!

Chapter 5 – Old Allies

It was close to 8 in the morning when the new Team 7 met up at the meeting point and started warming up. It was around half past nine when Kakashi finally arrived and Sakura was still in her pretzel position. She finally got out of it and stretched a bit more as her teammates got up from the sitting position that they were in and turned their attention to their new sensei.

"Follow me, we need to go to the Hokage Tower to receive missions," Kakashi said as he led the way.

**At the Hokage Tower**

Sarutobi and Iruka-sensei were sitting behind a long table that had many scrolls and forms on them when the new team seven entered the room.

"Ah, so this is the new Team 7? It's amazing that Kakashi actually has a team," Sarutobi said jokingly.

'What the hell is that supposed to mean?!' Team 7 thought, freaked out.

"We're here for their first mission," Kakashi said.

"Ah, I can see that, how about this one?" Sarutobi asked as he threw a scroll towards Kakashi.

Kakashi caught the scroll effortlessly and examined it after opening it and nodded as he led his team out.

It was about 10 minutes later that team seven entered the room again while holding a scared cat that had a red ribbon around its neck. Sarutobi looked at them wide-eyed, they found and captured it in 10 minutes, where it usually took a new team, a few hours or so to catch the trouble making cat.

Team 7 received their pay and waited as they were assigned their next mission. The same thing happened, except when they came back they were empty handed, their mission was to paint the new academy classroom.

Saurobi just assigned them more than one mission this time and watched as they returned in an hour, he had just assigned them 5 missions, what the heck was going on?! Iruka was just as surprised as the Sandaime, as Kakashi looked indifferent, having been able to observe his team, multi-task and split up to complete the many missions in record time.

By the time they called it a day, they had done 20 or so missions. This was really going to bite, these missions were crappy, they were D-rank missions, missions assigned to the lowest rank of shinobi with the smallest amount of experience. That was far from what the new Team 7 was, they needed a challenge, and they were going to get it, some way or another.

**A Week Later**

Sarutobi was once again in the room for missions when Team 7 entered the room after their ten minute leave and watched as they returned the cat to its own and watched in horror as it was being choked to death in a hug.

'The cat is smart,' Team 7 thought, sympathizing with the poor cat in a death grip.

"Ah, your next missions will be grocery shopping, washing clothes, painti-" the Sandime was cut-off when the scroll, that he was reading from, disappeared from his hands and appeared stuck to the wall behind him with a kunai.

Sarutobi turned around to see the scroll that he was just holding embedded to the wall behind him. Then he turned back around and saw an angry Team 7.

All of the occupants in the room other than the angry Team 7 were wide-eyed with surprise.

"Quit giving us such crappy missions, old man! We did over a hundred of these crappy missions in a week! We want something more challenging!" Naruto said.

"You can't just go demanding higher missions like that," Iruka shouted.

"Who are you to me? You may be of higher rank, but you have not importance to me, hold your tongue, Chunin," Naruto seethed.

"Naruto calm down, if you lose it, I will be happy to bring you back, the most painful way ever," Sakura said with much authority in her voice as Naruto calmed down slightly and cowered away from the scary female.

Sarutobi chuckled and said, "True, you have much more experience than the other new teams and many more missions but are you sure that you're ready for a higher mission?"

"Oh course we are, Hokage-sama," Sakura said, determined as her teammates nodded in agreement.

"I guess that we can't change their minds now, fine, you win, I'll give you a C-rank mission," Sarutobi said as he picked up another scroll.

"But Hoka-" Iruka was stopped by a raised hand, he backed down and watched.

"This is an escorting mission, you will escort a master bridge-builder to the Land of Waves, please come in." Saruobi said as the door opened to reveal a man in his forties, not all that sober, with a bottle in his hands.

"Kids were assigned to protect me? They don't look promising at all, especially the smallest one," the man said as he pointed to Naruto who immediately had the old man pinned the the floor with his arm behind him and a kunai at his neck.

Kakashi pried Naruto off their client and said, "As you can see, they are not just normal kids, I'm confident that we'll protect you all the way. Besides, I'm a Jounin, I'll make sure that nothing happens."

"Team, meet up at the main gate in half an hour, pack everything you need for a mission," Kakashi said as his team nodded and proceeded to exit the office.

**At the Main Gate**

The team met up at the main gate and waited for their ever late sensei as they observed their first real client. He was a grungy old man, that wore walking books, khaki trousers (which were stuffed into the boots) a dark green sleeveless shirt, a white towel around his neck, and a pair of spectacles on the bridge on his nose.

It was half an hour later that their late sensei finally arrived and they set off for their first real mission outside of the village gates, not that it made a difference to Kakashi, Naruto, Sakura, or the client, but it meant that it was one step closer to killing that bastard to Sasuke.

As they were walking down a dry path, they suddenly came across a small puddle but it seemed like only Sakura, Naruto, and Kakashi noticed. Naruto decided to act like the idiot that he was and ran and jumped into the puddle, stomping all around, and then a kunai "accidantlly" fell out of its holster, dropping into the puddle, point down.

Sakura giggled as Kakashi smirked, Sasuke rolled his eyes and their client just ignored it and continued walking on. As they continued walking, two ninja appeared out of the puddle and one had a kunai in its shoulder and both of them ran towards the Jounin.

Chains suddenly wrapped around Kakashi and sliced him to pieces as the two masked shinobi said, "One down, four to go," and ran towards the old man.

Naruto dashed in front of them and threw a shuriken and a kunai together, locking together in one of the chain rings to the trunk of a tree and prevented them from forwarding.

Sakura pulled out a senbon and threw it at one of their necks killing them while taking out a few more and threw them at the other one, paralyzing him. Sasuke appeared and kicked the paralyzed ninja in the chest and sent him into the trunk of a tree.

It was then that Kakashi appeared in front of them and nodded to them. "Good work you three," Kakashi said as the three nodded.

"Now, tell us, who do you work for?" Kakashi asked as he looked at the paralyzed nin.

"I will never tell, and you can never make me!" he shouted as Kakashi nodded towards Sakura who walked towards the paralyzed nin and took out the senbon that paralyzed his lower body and jabbed the same needle into his family's jewels.

The masked nin yelped out in pain suddenly foamed at the mouth. He killed himself. Sakura looked disappointed, wanting to watch the male nin wreath in pain and pouted her lips, scaring the other males with her.

Kakashi turned to their client and said, "This is not a C-rank mission anymore. If it weren't for the fact that these three had the experience and knew how to fight and kill, they would have been the ones killed. What have you not told us?"

The client, who was already sweating started sweating bullets under the intense gaze and gulped as he explained everything. They found out that the Land of Wave was once a prospering town until someone named Gato came in and took out all of their trading routes and left everyone in poverty, making it hard for him to hire any higher level ninjas for help.

"We have to report this to the Hoka-" Kakashi was cut off by Naruto who shouted, "Why the hell should we? We just took on two freaking Chuunins, shinobi higher than us Genins without getting hurt! I think that we are able to pull through with this mission!"

"I agree, those two were a piece of cake, let's continue this damn mission. We finally got a challenging mission and we want to finish it," Sakura added.

"Plus, we never knew that you were a one to back down from something," Naruto added, taunting their sensei whose eyebrow twitched at the comment.

"I guess we're finishing this mission," Sasuke announced as they continued walking.

It was when they got off the boat and walked for a small distance that Sakura and Naruto suddenly smiled at each other. A massive sword was suddenly thrown at them as Kakashi shouted, "Everyone DOWN!" And all of them ducked down.

The massive zanbato was embedded into the trunk of a tree when a ninja appeared on top of it. He wore blue camouflage pants, blue camouflage arm warmers, and bandages wrapped around the bottom of his face, with his hiate ite warn in an awkward fashion, with it slanted across his forehead, off to the side. It was the Demon of the Bloody Mist.

"What the hell did you do that for, you bastard! You almost cut my hair!" Naruto shouted.

"Oh, are you getting slow? Because I was pretty sure that you sensed me way before I threw out my sword," the Demon said casually as Naruto snarled.

"Zabuza-san, I advise you not to piss him off. Remember what happened last time, Hinata, Haku-kun, and I weren't even helping at that time," Sakura replied casually which further confused the others.

The shinobi known as Zabuza paled at the memory, that had made the feared Demon of the Bloody Mist seem like a small baby compared to that blond reincarnated devil.

They heard someone chuckling from the forest and out stepped a masked ninja, who was clutching their sides from laughing too hard. "That was gold, I still can't stop laughing at that," he managed to choke out as the Demon's nonexistent eyebrow twitched.

"I swear, they destroyed all your goodwill when we met them, you were never the same after," Zabuza said as he glared at the blond devil.

"Who the hell are you glaring at?" Naruto said as he glared back and faltered the glare of the older ninja.

Kakashi had things somewhat figured out but their client and Sasuke were still really confused. Sasuke was seething inside at the fact that Naruto was able to falter such a strong looking shinobi just by glaring at them. He was the one that was supposed to be able to do that! He was the one that had all the power! He was the Last Uchiha! He was the one that needed to kill that bastard!

Sakura walked up to the masked nin and hugged him affectionately as he hugged back. Naruto then walked up to the hugging pair and pat the masked boy on the back. After the two broke apart, the masked boy finally removed the mask and showed a gentle, feminine face for a boy who looked around the age of 15.

"How has it been Haku?" Sakura asked.

"Its been pretty boring since you guys left us two years ago, by the way, where's Hinata and who is that brooding idiot over there?"

"Oh yeah, forgot to tell you, Naruto, that brooding idiot over there, and I are an official team, Hinata is on a different team, too bad, we worked so well together," Sakura sighed.

"Ahh, that sucks. Yeah, you guys were freaking scary when you worked together, freaking perfect teamwork. You practically whooped Zabuza-san's and my asses when we battled two years ago, and that was only after one year of working together, kind of scary how well you guys work together," Haku said as he shuddered.

"Hell yeah! It would have been awesome if we actually became an official team! We would have been kicking butts left and right, where ever we went!" Naruto shouted.

"Well, we're on our first C-rank mission right now, even though it seems that its much higher now, most likely an A-rank mission. Oh well, the more challenging, the funner," Sakura shouted as she shrugged, not affected by the rank of the mission. As long as it was challenging, she was up for it.

"Yeah, well I think that we have to explain to the others how we know you," Naruto said as he pointed to the three confused musketeers.

"We'll explain once we reach your house, Tazuna-san," Sakura said to their client as they continued walking like as if nothing happened and two A-list criminals weren't following them. Tazuna became really nervous as the two criminals followed the group and continued until they got to his house.

Once they reached the house, Tazuna knocked on the door and it opened to reveal a beautiful women around the age of 25. The women looked surprised at first but calmed down when she saw Tazuna.

"Tsunami, I've brought the shinobi back home, I hope that you have prepared the rooms like I asked, only four of them are staying," Tazuna said as Tsunami nodded her head and let everyone in as they followed Tazuna through the house and into a simple kitchen.

Everyone, that was actually involved in the mission, sat down around the table as they looked at each other, waiting for the other to explain what the hell was going on.

"I can tell that you two know those two from the training trip with Jiraiya-sama and Tsunade-hime, two years ago," Kakashi started as the four mentioned nodded.

"I'm curious about what Zabuza meant with the teamwork. I mean, I heard from both Jiraiya-sama and Tsunade-hime that you three had amazing teamwork, but I didn't know that you had enough to beat down the famous Demon of the Bloody Mist," Kakashi continued.

"Well, let's just say that we kicked their asses," Naruto said as Sakura hit him on the head as he yelped in pain.

"Let's just say that in our team," Sakura said as she pointed to her and Naruto. "I was the genjutsu, Naruto was the ninjutsu, and Hinata-chan was the taijutsu, and we were able to work together really well, even after only one year of working together."

"Yeah, Zabuza and Haku were a piece of cake, we barely worked up a sweat when we played with them," Naruto said as he shrugged.

Everyone else in the room widened their eyes, they were only playing with them at that time. That happened two years ago, who knows how strong they are together now and when their serious. Everyone shuddered at the thought as Sasuke started trembling in anger.

"That's basically what it is. Well, we stayed with them for a while, like say, a month and then we left," Sakura concluded.

"We'll, I guess that that works. I'm guessing that you two aren't going to stay with us. If so, then please leave right now, you are still enemies to us, Konoha nin, thank you," Kakashi said as he directed it towards the two missing-nin who nodded and left.

"Now that that is over, I'm guessing that you are all hungry," Tazuna said as Tsunami brought food to the table and everyone nodded in agreement.

A/N: There you go, chapter five. I hope that you liked it and review. I was kind of stumped at first on what to write and then I suddenly got an idea and started writing. I hope you liked it and please review!


	6. Chapter 6 Playing Around

A/N: I'm back, finally, sorry for the wait! Well, I was busy working with another story and I had a writer's block for this one, so I started the chapter and I didn't know where I wanted it to go, but I just started writing another time and added more and more, and here I am with a new chapter! I hope you like it and please review when your done reading!

Chapter 6 – Playing Around

The team and their sensei and old allies walked into the forest near the house of their client and into a clearing surrounded by tall wide trees, perfect for what Kakashi had planned for them that day.

Naruto and Sakura already figured out what Kakashi had planned for them and decided to just go along with it for a while and then split off and go train with Zabuza and Haku. They came to a clearing and stopped as Kakashi stopped in front of the group.

"Okay, today we will be climbing trees," Kakashi announced.

Sakura and Naruto took a glance at each other and inwardly smirked, this was going to be fun.

"How the hell is climbing trees supposed to help us?!" Naruto blurted out.

"I suppose that it can help us with physical strength but nothing at the moment," Sakura said.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow and wondered what they were playing at. "Well, for starters, we won't be using our hands, we will only be using our feet," Kakashi stated.

"I still don't understand, Kaka-sensei," Sakura said, confused.

"Yeah! I mean, like dude, how the hell do you do that?!" Naruto asked loudly.

"Well, let me demonstrate then," Kakashi said as he walked up to the trunk of a tree and then placed a foot on the trunk and then another. Sooner or later he was on the first branch upside down.

"This is what I mean," Kakashi said.

"Oh!!! So that's what you meant, Kaka-sensei, you could have said that in the first place!" Naruto shouted.

"Dobe, that's why you wait," Sasuke said.

"Psh, whatever teme! I was just curious," Naruto explained.

"I'm surprised that you even know what that word means," Sasuke retorted.

Naruto pouted as Sakura shook her head.

"Now, let's see you try this out," Kakashi said.

The Sakura and Naruto crouched down on a knee, with their hands on the ground as Sasuke bent down a bit but still standing. Naruto and Sakura once again took a glance at each other and inwardly smirked, this was going to be fun.

"On your mark, get set, go," Kakashi said as the three of them started running towards their chosen trees.

Sasuke thought that he was doing way better than the other two weak ones until he used to much chakra and was pushed away from the tree, leaving a foot mark where his last step was. Sasuke landed safely and looked up to where his mark was, thinking proudly that he was the best, that was until he looked over to his weak teammates and couldn't believe his eyes. They weren't supposed to be able to do that before him.

Naruto was running as fast as he could up the tree, leaving after images while Sakura was running and jumping and doing vertical front flips on the tree. She would run and then jump off the tree a bit and then do a cartwheel and then a few front flips.

"You mean like this sensei?" Sakura asked as she continued doing cartwheels and front flips.

"Sakura, why do you aways do that?" Naruto asked, already at the top of the tree, standing at the very tip of the tree with complete balance.

"Because it's fun, you don't get to do vertical gymnastics very often, might as well take advantage of it," Sakura replied casually as she stopped doing flips about halfway of the tree, and ran really fast to the top of the tree leaving after images.

Sasuke, who was pissed, looked over to Kakashi and the two missing-nins saw their expressions, Kakashi was shaking his head, knowing that the two were just messing with Sasuke earlier. The two missing-nin were also shaking their heads, making it seem like they've seen them do this before.

"Hey, Sasuke! What are you doing down there? I thought that you were supposed to be better than us!" Naruto shouted down to the forest floor.

Sasuke shook with anger, how dare he make fun of him, an Uchiha?

"Naruto no baka!" Sakura shouted as she jumped onto Naruto's tree, he saw it coming and started running down the tree.

"You weren't all that great when you started out!" Sakura shouted as she ran after him.

"Sakura-chan, that was like three years ago, don't bring that up," Naruto whined as he pushed off from the tree and did a few flips and landed safely, crouched down.

Sakura did the same and landed in front of him, "Oh well, whatever, I don't care anymore, I'm bored now. Kaka-sensei. Naruto and I are going to go train with Zabuza-sensei and Haku-kun," Sakura said as she got up and started walking towards the two missing-nins, Naruto following after her.

"You better get it down by the time we come back, Sasuke-teme!" Naruto shouted as he received a bump from Sakura on the head who hit him.

"Be nicer to your teammates! Otherwise, we will never be able to work together, sheesh, you really are an idiot!" Sakura screeched as they disappeared from view.

"But look at what you're doing to me!"

The group walked towards a stream nearby as they left their teammate with their sensei, hoping that he would have some progress.

Of course, they knew that he would have some progress but it would be better it they weren't there pressuring him, well, Naruto didn't think so.

The group walked to a nearby stream and Sakura stayed under the shade of the many trees in the vast forest as Naruto and Haku were going one-on-one. Naruto was still clearly the stronger one, despite the age difference of 3 years.

They still had a tendency to play around with their enemies and then strike them down hard in the ending, knocking them out or killing them, if necessary. At least that was what Sakura did, play around with them a bit and then kill them with a fast strike at the end, it always gave her more entertainment than going all out.

Sakura decided to engage in a spar with Zabusa when she felt him throw a kunai in her direction, which she caught with her fingers with much ease. She turned in his direction and walked out from beneath the shade. He was already in an offense position, ready to attack.

Sakura walked to a reasonable distance away and stood there as she took reached behind her back and into her hip pouch, not pulling it out just yet, she was going to have fun. She ran towards him, her hand still hidden. Once she got to him, she disappeared and reappeared behind him, stabbing him in the lower back with what she had in hand.

Then she pulled it back out and back flipped away as Zabusa turned around, not affected. He knew her better than that, he knew that she injected had something into him but he didn't know what. She always played with her opponents like that, injecting something into them that didn't take affect immediately and as they fought, it would take effect, and all she needed to take them down was with one fast strike.

Sakura stood there with a smirk on her face, she knew that he knew what her fighting style was but that was three years ago, she could have completely changed it for all he cared, but this was for old times sake. She also wanted to try something new.

She saw that he was getting ready to charge at him so she got into a defensive position. He charged at her, just as she had expected. He swung his huge sword at her as she used some chakra to create a protective covering and caught the blade near her neck and swung her fist at his stomach as he pulled away and dodged the fatal blow.

Heck, she didn't need anything to subdue them, she could kill them with one blow for they cared. It was just more fun for her, call her a sadist or whatever but this was what she did.

As he pulled away, he felt that he couldn't control his body to land safely and tumbled down to the ground. This was new, the things that she usually injected into her opponents took longer to take effect and it was stronger also. This seemed to attack his nervous system, preventing him from operating his body properly.

Sakura smirked, it was perfect, just a bit more and it would get to the really fun part.

When Zabusa felt that he had control of his body again, he got back up and charged at her again. This time, Sakura didn't just stand there and let him charge at her, she also charged and met him halfway, her hand still hand the chakra shield on it and she, once again, caught his blade as he swung it at her. She used her other hand and backhanded him, sending him flying.

This time it was totally different. Zabusa felt that he still had control over his body as he maneuvered himself to be able to land safely even if her lost control. But as he neared the ground, he was suddenly flung to the other side.

Sakura stood there as she watched him fall, hand outstretched, still in the the post-backhand position, her fingers relaxed. As he neared the ground, her fingers tensed a bit as she threw him to the other side into the forest while he was still in he air. How the hell did she do that, you might ask.

Zabusa was still trying to figure that out himself. He thought that he had total control over his body when he was falling but guess not. She must have struck at the last second. He recovered from his fall and walked back to the clearing and saw that Sakura was still in the same position that he saw last, except her arm was now held across her chest, fingers a bit tense.

This was the end, he thought as he felt that he lost control of his body again and this time, he was flung to the other side into the stream. He couldn't get up to the surface, as Sakura had prevented that and kept him below.

Sakura felt his resistance slip away and concluded that he was about to lose consciousness and pulled him out and threw him onto the side bank, letting him choke out the water that had gotten into his lungs.

She walked over to him calmly and bent down next to him. She then place her hands, one on top of the other, on his chest and gave it a sharp push as she push out the remaining water in he lungs and he spit it all out. She got up and pulled him back up.

"What the hell was that?" Zabusa asked, still coughing.

"A ninja never tells their secrets," Sakura replied as she turned around and saw that Haku and Naruto were done sparring.

She walked back over to the spot that she was at, prior to the fight that she had with Zabusa, and sat down, a bit tired from all the excitement.

"Should we go back yet?" Naruto asked.

Sakura looked up to the sky and read the sun's position, it was around 4:30-ish, they still had time.

"Nah, we still have time, I still want to spar with Haku-kun," Sakura said.

"Fine, but after that you kids need to return to your team," Zabusa said as Naruto launched himself on to him to prove that he wasn't a kid. Sakura just let Naruto do all the work.

Sakura walked back to the middle of the clearing as Haku followed. When the fight started it was practically the same thing she did with Zabusa, she was still experimenting with it so threw him up into the air and spun him around, around, and around...poor Haku.

She threw him down and turned away as he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the ground.

"Now we can go," Sakura said happily as Haku stood up and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"Damn, that's harsh, Sakura-chan," Haku stated as Sakura shrugged and said, "It's more fun like that and I was still playing around with it, it's new."

The group walked back to the clearing that they had left and saw that Sasuke was about halfway up the tree, so much for tremendous progress. Sakura looked around and saw that there was a dent in the ground that looked strangely similar to the form of Zabusa getting slammed into the group, oops.

She turned to Zabusa who was glaring at the dent and asked, "I forgot to ask, Zabusa-sensei, where did you land when I threw you?"

"Right there," Zabusa replied as he pointed towards the dent in the ground as the others who heard it were shocked to say the least.

"Let's see, that was about 200 meters from where we were before and I used about that much chakra, ah, perfect, I know what to do now," Sakura said as she slammed the bottom of her fist on an open palm. What the hell was that supposed to mean?!

"Damn, Zabusa-sama, I thought getting spun 100 meters in the air at roughly 60 miles per hour and then slammed down to the ground was bad enough, yours must have sucked," Haku said nonchalantly.

The eyes of the two people who weren't part of the group that witnessed her doing it, widened and their jaws almost fell to the ground. Now what the hell was THAT supposed to mean?! It just wasn't right!

A 12-year-old girl flinging around two males, a full grown man and a teenage guy, what the freak was going on?!

Sakura shrugged as it was like nothing and then turned to her new sensei and new teammate, "So, how's your progress?"

Sasuke growled a bit as Kakashi answered, "It's coming along just fine, he should be at the top of the tree by the end of the week and maybe more."

Sakura nodded in response and walked up to a random tree as everyone else watched her. She then reeled back her clenched up fist and shot it at the middle of the tree, which in turn, shattered into pieces as a ninja with his face covered fell down and tried to escape by getting out of the hugs pile of tree pieces. But Sakura already had that covered.

As the enemy nin tried to get out of the pile, Sakura threw a senbon at him and got him in the right bicep, Zabusa, Haku, and Naruto knew what was going to happen. Sasuke and Kakashi stood there confused as the senbon had no effect, why didn't she throw more?

Sakura stood there as she watched as the nin plowed through the huge pile, got out, and started to run for it. She flexed her fingers and he sprang back and was thrown up into the air and then slammed into the pile of pointy tree shreds, causing the tree shreds to pierce into his back, all along his spinal column, paralyzing.

Kakashi and Sasuke were ready to attack if the nin got out of the pile but they were confused as Sakura just flexed her fingers and he sprang back and was slammed into the pile again, causing the tree shreds to pierce deeper into his body. Now what the hell just happened?

Sakura walked up to the nin calmly and asked, "Who might you be?" as she jabbed another senbon into his vocal chords, a truth serum.

The nin was a bit confused at first and then said, "I work for Gato-sama, I was to follow the Demon of the Bloody Mist and report to Gato-sama if anything suspicious happened."

Sakura nodded and then said, "Good boy, bye bye." Sakura then took out another senbon and stabbed into his throat, the others cringed at her violent behavior towards enemy nin, they were glad that she was on their side.

"Now that that's over, what do we do now?" Sakura said as she turned away from the now dead nin and turned to face the still cringing group, was she really a girl?

"Well, we still need to take Gato down for ruining the village and that would be all," Kakashi said.

"No, we need make a scenario where Zabusa-sama and Haku-kun are attacking us, since his little spy didn't report back to him that would mean that everything was fine. That is where Gato is probably going to come in, that's where we take him down," Sakura explained as Kakashi sighed.

"Let's say that when you first attacked us, you were injured and had to have a week to recover, and so the attack will be next week on the bridge," Kakashi finished.

"I like that," Sakura said as she nodded in agreement.

"Well, its getting late, and we need to go report to Gato about our progress," Haku announced as they bid goodbyes and went there separate ways.

Sakura still needed to talk to Haku about something and caught up to him and told him whatever she needed to tell him as the others went before her. Haku nodded in agreement as Sakura hugged him and caught up with the others and returned to the house. They entered the house and was greeted by the aroma of homemade cooking.

A/N: I should be finishing this mission by the end of the first half of the next chapter. I'm sorry for taking so long to update, I had a writer's block. Oh well, I hope you liked it, and please check out my new story, What the FREAK is Going on?!, I hope you like it! Please review!


	7. Chapter 7 Finishing & Breaking

A/N: LUUUUUUCY!!! I'M HOOME! I'm back, with another exciting, at least I think so, chapter, sorry for the wait, I forgot to finish the chapter before my personal deadline and was forced to update it on the next deadline, which is usually Saturday, around noon for me, hehe. Well I hope you like it and please review!

Chapter 7 – Finishing and Breaking

Team 7 was ready to guard their client as they surrounded him, escorting him to the workplace, Naruto suddenly said that he had to go back to use the bathroom as the others shook their heads and let him be.

As soon as the remaining people got to the bridge they were greeted by the sight of the other workers lying on the ground, dead. Kakashi, Sakura, and Sasuke had to sweatdrop at this, Did they have to make it that extreme.

"What the hell happened to my men?!" Tazuna shouted as he looked around frantically, looking for any survivors as a thick mist started to surround them, hindering their vision.

The shinobi instantly surrounded their client as they waited for the opposing enemy to come out. Sakura smirked as ten water clones of one of the enemy surrounded them.

She turned to Sasuke and said, "I'm sure that you're able to handle them by now."

Sasuke growled a bit and made quick work of the clones surrounding them.

"Kakashi, seems like the brats have gotten stronger," Zabusa said as he emerged from the mist, Haku at his side.

"I knew that you weren't dead. Of course they were never weak, they just didn't want to show you their true power," Kakashi said as he smirked, Tazuna was confused at what was going on, they were good friends through out the week. What the hell had happened that caused them to go to these lengths to humiliate the other?

"Sasuke, take that fake hunter-nin, Sakura, guard Tazuna," Kakashi said as he charged at Zabusa and Sasuke and Sakura nodded, doing what their sensei had told them to do.

Sasuke immediately engaged the hunter-nin in a battle as Sakura stood in a defensive stance, kunai drawn, in front of their confused client, "Don't worry, we know what were doing," Sakura whispered and assured their confused client who nodded, still unsure.

Naruto had just finished using the bathroom as he felt the two hiding, not that they were doing a good job or anything, samurai advance towards Tsunami and an unsuspecting Inari.

Tsunami screamed as Naruto ran into the kitchen and quickly knocked out the two retarded samurai and tied them up. As he tied them to a chair and took off their shoes leaving them barefoot, he reached into his pouch and extracted a long bird feather, something that he always kept on hand, for pranks that is.

He then handed it to the confused Inari and said, "Here, if they wake up, tickle their feet with this, they will never be able to get out."

Inari took the feather and asked, "Why are you doing this? You're just going to get killed like all the others!"

"Well, it's 'cause that's just what I do, besides, a hero always comes at the last moment," Naruto said encouragingly and flashed a smile at the now inspired 8-year-old, and dashed off to the bridge to join the planned fight.

When Naruto got there he saw that Sakura was guarding the client, Kakashi was no where in sight but judging from the occasional chakra spikes, he knew that he was fighting Zabusa, and Sasuke was surrounded by Haku's special kekkei genkai jutsu. He was going to help Sasuke but he knew that Sasuke had to awaken his Sharingan to be useful and just left it as it was.

He walked over to Sakura and got into a defensive stance as Sakura straightened up and had a gleam in her eyes. Naruto sighed as she knew that gleam, she was to going to go take care of their target right then and there. She was never one to wait for the enemy to come to her, she always went to them.

Naruto sighed and shook his head, she was always like that. One of the reasons that their missions were always short was that even though she had incredible patience she never used it. She loved playing with her prey.

It was a few minutes later that all of them heard a blood curdling scream, she was having fun alright. The mist cleared to show Sakura on the end of the bridge that wasn't finished yet, holding the decapitated head of Gato, his headless body laying on the ground, senbon needles stuck into places that made all of the males there, which was everyone, shudder in fear.

The group of low ranked gangsters that Gato had brought with him, turned to their employer in surprise as they didn't hear the girl pass their ranks. They slowly backed away from the crazy pink-haired girl who was holding the head of their boss with a creepy smile on her face.

The groups' backing away was cut short when they heard explosions coming from behind them and turned around to see a blond boy with a bunch of firecrackers, which they thought were more than they looked to be. They turned back around to run to the rope at the edge of the bridge that led to the boat down on the water but remembered that the crazy one was there.

They froze, no where to go as Sakura brought her hand up to the bottom of her chin, flat, and blew upon it as if there was something on it, and soon, each of the gangsters flew to the ground, knocked out.

Kakashi took out a scroll and threw it to Sakura who caught it and sealed her prize into it and walked back over to the group.

"You didn't have to be that mean," Kakashi said as he sighed.

"What do you mean, I just killed him, how can I be mean to someone that I just killed?" Sakura questioned as she returned the scroll to her team leader.

"What he means is that you didn't have to torture him in the worst way possible before you killed him," Sasuke said as he walked towards them, Sharingan awaken with 2 tomoe in each eye with Haku following.

"You shouldn't say that to her, she does that to every male target that she gets," Naruto sighed as he explained and walked up to the group as the others shuddered.

Sakura walked up to Haku and gave him a hug saying, "Good job, I knew that you could do it."

"I knew that I could do it too," Haku responded with his pompous attitude as Sakura punched him playfully on the arm and the punched winced.

"All he needed was a bit of help, that was all, I saw that already," Naruto said.

The others, except Kakashi was confused, he figured out what had happened, it helped the team too.

"Now what do we do with the bandits?" Kakashi asked.

"We'll take of them," came a small determined voice from behind them, coming from the direction of the village as they turned around and saw small Inari, a small crossbow in his hands with a whole group of villagers behind him, all armed and determined.

"Well, that takes care of that, now I have to continue building the bridge," Tazuna said as some of the people from the group that Inari brought, came up to him and offered him a hand with everything as Naruto created 50 some shadow clones to help out as the rest of the shinobi group helped also. Something that the villagers weren't expecting happened, the workers that were dead before got back up and started working too. They just had a genjutsu placed on them making their minds and bodies think that they were dead

It was about few days later that they finished building the bridge and the townspeople were seeing team seven and the missing nins off as they bid goodbye and went off on their ways.

Back at the end of the bridge someone voiced the question, "What are we going to name the bridge?"

"That is a very goo question, let me think, we should name it Kushin, for all the hard work that they have put into this mission, they deserve it," Tazuna announced as everyone agreed.

As the group walked across the bridge, Naruto asked the two missing-nins, "Where are you guys going to go to now?"

"Oh, Zabusa-sama and I will be going north, to the Land of the Snow, so that I can train more and create new jutsus," Haku said.

"Oh okay, I guess that this is where we part," Sakura said as she hugged Haku as they neared the end of the bridge. They bid goodbyes to each other and set off in their own directions.

On their way back to Konoha, Team 7 were walking at a leisurely pace when they saw two green blurs charging at them, one after the other. Sakura and Naruto who were alerted long before their third teammate, got into a defensive stance as they saw the two blurs flying towards them. Sakura and Naruto each caught a leg of the things that were coming towards them and swung it around a bit, turning around in circles themselves from the momentum and then slammed them onto the ground.

Sakura and Naruto each had the two shinobi-like things on its stomachs and an arm twisted around their backs, hindering any movement from them. They would have broken their arms if Naruto hadn't noticed the Konoha hiate ite on the one that he was restraining and told Sakura to restrain herself, they were allies.

Kakashi sighed as he commanded his students to get off the two Konoha shinobi. The two of them obeyed reluctantly and got off of the two shinobi.

"MY YOUTHFUL RIVAL! I KNEW THAT YOUR TEAM WAS GOING TO BE YOUTHFUL BUT THEY ARE MORE YOUTHFUL THAT I IMAGINED!" roared the bigger one as he sprung up from the ground.

"YES, GAI-SENSEI, THEY ARE TRULY YOUTHFUL, BUT I WILL DO 500 PUSH UPS TO PROVE THAT I AM STILL MORE YOUTHFUL!" the smaller one shouted.

"THAT'S IT LEE! THAT WILL DEFINITELY PROVE THAT YOU ARE MORE YOUTFUL, BUT IF YOU DO NOT SUCCEED THEN, DO NOT LET THAT HINDER YOUR YOUTHFULNESS!" cried "Gai-sensei."

"GAI-SENSEI, YOU ARE SO YOUTHFUL, IF I DO NOT SUCCEED THEN I WILL RUN AROUND KONOHA 200 TIMES ON MY HANDS!" shouted "Lee."

"LEE!" "Gai-sensei shouted as he hugged his student.

"GAI-SENSEI!" "Lee shouted as he hugged back.

A painted sunset suddenly popped up in the background, causing the tears that ran down their faces in rivers to glisten in the artificial sunlight.

All of them twitched at this and decided to continue on their way to Konoha, leaving the two green beasts of Konoha to their scary hug fest. As Team 7 was well on their way back to Konoha, two ninjas emerged from the bushes to be blinded from the freakingly bright artificial sunlight from their teammates hobby, panting.

"What the hell is wrong with them?" the brunette with her hair up in two buns asked as she tried to catch her breath.

"Hn," answered the one with long brown hair tied at the bottom, as he caught his breath quickly.

At the Konoha gates, Team 7 passed by easily and they made their way towards the Hokage tower to report the status of their mission.

They arrived at the door of the Hokage and knocked and after permission to enter their room was granted, they opened the door and walked in.

Kakashi had explained what had happened during the mission and told the Hokage that it would have been considered an A-rank mission if it weren't for the fact that two of his subordinates knew the two missing nins. The Hokage's eyes widened as he reached into one of the drawers of his big table and pulled out four envelopes, handing one to each of them.

They had each received payment for an A-rank mission and told them that they were dismissed and reminded Kakashi to turned in the mission report soon. After they exited the Hokage tower, they each went their separate ways and had the rest of the day off, at least the Genins did.

Sakura had walked towards the direction in which her house was in and Naruto and Sasuke walked towards their training rounds, ready to spar with each other until they were too tired to move.

Sakura entered the house and saw that everyone was gone and she was the only one home. She walked up to her room and put the payment, that she just received, away with her other stash, and saw that she would soon need a new place to stash it, the stash was getting to big.

Sakura then felt that someone was calling for her and went to the source and found herself in the Hokage's office.

"You called?" Sakura asked as the Hokage nodded.

"I would like you and The Special Team to take on this mission before the Chuunin Exams," the Hokage said as he tossed a scroll to Sakura, who looked at it and saw that it was trimmed in gold, Sakura raised an eyebrow and asked, "An S-Rank? An assassination, I'm guessing."

The Hokage nodded and said, "I'm sorry that this was so sudden and I know that I promised Tsunade and Jiraiya that I won't give you guys anymore missions until you at least reached Chuunin but this is urgent."

"May I inquire what is involved in this mission?" Sakura asked in a business-like voice.

"An A-rank missing-nin has just left Suna and is heading towards Konoha, none of their hunter-nins will be able to get him in time," Sarutobi said as he sighed.

"In time for what?" Sakura asked seriously.

"It is rumored that the missing-nin is targeting the Hokage, and Konoha, having to protect their leader and also an ally to Suna, must comply," Sakurobi explained.

"What about other teams? Are they not available?" Sakura pondered.

"There are some but according to the report from Suna, their tracking and fighting style will not suit the mission, the others that will are currently on other missions, your team is the last resort and the only that is capable of fulfilling this mission quickly and efficiently, I hope that you will do just that," Sarutobi said.

"Does shishou and Jiraiya-sama know and approve of this?" Sakura asked skeptically.

"Yes, they understand the problem and allowed it after a bit of persuading," Sarutobi said as he sighed.

"Okay, if I can take my leave now, I would like to go inform my teammates," Sakura said as she bowed and left the Hokage tower.

Sakura then decided to go check up on what Hinata was doing and shunshined to where she felt Hinata's chakra. She appeared up in a tree and watched as Team 8 trained with their senses, their team was a tracking team.

Sakura sat down on the branch that she landed on, leaning again the tree trunk, knees bent as she watched Team 8's training. She had to admit that they had good teamwork and that the two others were good, but she knew Hinata was better.

Shishou had prepared a training program in which all of them, excluding Hinata, would take turns, hiding from Hinata. They had a day to hide and prepare, anywhere and anyplace. They would leave at sunrise and Hinata would begin searching for them at the next sunrise. Her record being finding Sakura who was halfway to Suna, from the northeast border of the Land of the Wind, from their starting point at the northeast border of the Land of Fire, in 15 hours, covering hundreds of miles in between.

Sakura watched as they tracked and caught a moving cat in a little over 15 minutes, still not as good as Team 7 had done, but still not as good as Sakura and her special team would have done. Yes, her special team. She was the unspoken captain, Naruto and Hinata both being second in line, unofficially.

If she knew any better she would say that if it was her special team, then they would have tracked down and caught a moving cat, no matter how fast it was moving, in less than 3 minutes.

Sakura then felt a kunai thrown her way, as her reflexes took over she caught the sharp blade in between her two fingers, right at the tip, an inch away from the front of her throat.

"Its not nice to spy on people, teichou(captain)," Hinata said as she already shocked everyone by randomly throwing a kunai into a tree.

A girl with pink hair dropped down from the tree, holding the kunai that was thrown at her. "But targeting your teichou isn't all that nice either, now drop down and give me 50," Sakura said in a voice that held authority as the other dropped down and proceeded to doing 50 push-ups.

"Hinata stop," commanded the women with wavy black hair and blood red eyes as Hinata stopped but not getting up, "Who are you to command my student?" questioned the women.

"Hinata continue. After, you must do twenty laps up and down that tree," Sakura pointed to the tall tree that she was just on, "for stopping," Sakura said as she turned to the opposing female, meeting her stare, "Who are you to command my teammate and sister?" she asked as Hinata soon finished her push-ups, got up, and ran towards the appointed tree and started doing her laps.

"Yuuhi Kurenai, Hinata's teacher and team leader," the woman introduced.

"Haruno Sakura, Hinata's captain and adopted sister," Sakura introduced.

As Hinata finish, she was hardly out of breath and returned to Sakura's side, much to the other's surprise. Sakura then turned to Hinata and said, "Resume training with your team and meet me at the ramen stand after your done, I need to tell you and Naruto something," Sakura said in a voice that was strict and then shunshined away as Hinata bowed and continued training with her team. Sakura went to Team 7's training ground and found the both of her teammates, one of them breathless and the other nearly there.

"Naruto, meet me at the ramen stand later, I have something to tell you and Hinata," Sakura said, as Naruto straightened himself up and responded with a 'Hai,' as Sakura swirled away in sakura petals.

Sakura then proceeded to go home and study the thing that she was going to tell her teammates. She returned to her house and entered her room. She unrolled the scroll and found all the information about their target. She noticed that their target's abilities were hard to counter, no wonder it was hard for the Sandaime to find a match. Sakura was kind of scared that they might not be able to take him down. Sakura shrugged, they'll just have to find out.

She looked through the scroll once more and left for the ramen stand. When she arrived she saw that Hinata had already arrived and was standing to the side of it, calm, no sign of having been training before hand.

"Hey, Hinata-chan," Sakura greeted, still in captain mode as Hinata nodded. Naruto appeared shortly after.

"Come, let's have dinner," Sakura said as she led the two of them into the stand and sat down on one of the stools, the each of them sitting on either sides of her. They each placed their orders and as they waited, Sakura began to explain why she had called them there.

"As you all know we're on an hiatus for high-ranked missions issued directly from Hokage," Sakura began as the two of them nodded.

"It is also a known fact that the mission that Naruto and I had just returned from a C-rank mission turned A-rank mission," Sakura continued as the other two nodded.

"There will be a temporary break in our high-rank-mission hiatus, we will be taking on an assassination mission," Sakura announced as their food arrived.

"Does shishou know about this?" Hinata asked.

"Hai, both her and Jiraiya-sama were informed and have approved of the mission. We leave tomorrow morning at sunrise, I'll inform you of the missions then," Sakura concluded as the she started eating and the others nodded and started eating their dinner.

They each finished and paid for their meals as they went their separate ways after, Hinata and Sakura walking home as Naruto walked to the training ground where he was supposed to meet his adopted father.

Sakura stretched and questioned, reverting back to friend mode, "I wonder how the mission would go."

"We'll just have to wait and see," Hinata said as she giggled, laughing at Sakura's true childish nature.

"Yep. Yuuhi Kurenai, the resident Genjutsu Mistress in Konoha, I wonder how her leadership skills are compared to mine," Sakura asked, wondering.

"Kurenai sensei is a good person, she is smart, well-educated, and lives up to her title as the Genjutsu Mistress. She's kind and knows when to stop if she thinks that we've had enough, even though I could usually still continue," Hinata said.

"Well, that's 'cause you trained with me, Naruto, Shizune, Jiraiya-sensei, and shishou, a shinobi cannot stop just because they are tired. They have to get the job done, quickly and efficiently. No matter how they do it, they must try their best and report back successful as many times as they can," Sakura said, a determined tone underneath the encouraging one.

Hinata smiled, this was the true Sakura that she grew up with for most of her life, the one who had at least five different personalities, all different and unique as their own, all ones that you can depend on and look forward to seeing, except her Inner Sakura personality, which could be really scary when mad. Inner Sakura only came out when Sakura is really mad or when they are in a dire situation where Sakura can't do it alone.

Inner Sakura provides her with enhanced abilities and senses, making her more efficient but also more hard-headed and stubborn, that was her downfall.

"Kurenai-sensei was really shocked, when you went into captain-mode on us earlier today," Hinata said as she closed her eyes and shook her head, opening then back up afterwards.

"Well, first of all, it is rude to throw a sharp, shiny projectile at your teichou, and second I couldn't stand watching you do such easy training, I had to interject somehow," Sakura said as she shrugged.

"Sakura," Hinata said as she semi-scolded her jokingly.

"Well, whatever, last one home will have to clean the dishes," Sakura shouted as she went full speed,, running home as Hinata paused a bit, registering what she had just said and took off, just as fast, laughing.

A/N: Holy shit, that is one long ass chapter, this is by far my longest chapter, longer than the second chapter of one of my other stories, My Payment Please, which had around 3751 words (not including the author notes), this chapter has 3778 words (not including the author notes), okay not much more, but that is still a lot. I hope you liked it, please review! Arigato Gozaimasu!


	8. Chapter 8 Encouragement

A/N: Once again, I AM BAACK! I hope that you haven't missed me that much, well, I'm here with another chapter, and I hope you like it! Please review! Love you all!

Chapter 8 – Encouragement

Sakura and Hinata left the house together right before sunrise as they walked towards the west gates to meet up with their last teammate for the assassination mission. Both were equipped with tools and weapons to track down, trap, disable, and kill the target. The adopted sisters soon arrived that the gates to find a slender muscular body leaning against the side of the open gates, chatting with the gate guards on duty.

"Hey, Naru-kun," Sakura greeted as Hinata greeted afterwards with a simple nod.

"Hey Sakura-chan, Hinata-chan," Naruto greeted as he walked towards his original teammates.

"So, I briefly go over the mission as we take off," Sakura said as the three of them walked through the gates, signaling the guards that they were going on a mission by showing the scroll with the Hokage's seal in to them briefly.

They walked out a bit and then took off into the trees, that was when Sakura started explaining. "Kunitsu Masao, an A-rank missing-nin from Suna left the borders of the village yesterday with an intent to hurt the Hokage, there weren't any available teams that had the skills and fighting style that could trap and assassinate the missing-nin efficiently. It is our mission to do just that, capture and kill."

"Hai," Naruto and Hinata responded, all they needed with the mission briefing and they knew what to do. The team had a fool-proof plan for these kinds of missions and they were confident that it won't fail them now.

Hinata immediately activated her Byakugan in search of their prey. As they neared the halfway point from their village gates to the southwestern border, Hinata spotted him. She wasn't given a description of the target but her gut told her that this was the one.

She informed the other two of it's position and all three of them went to work. Naruto and Sakura went ahead to corner the missing nin as Hinata quickly came up with a plan to fully trap the target and relayed it to the others using precise chakra waves that allows one teammate to "talk" to another through vibrations.

Naruto and Sakura relayed the message back to Hinata to assure that they had received it. After they got into range, they successfully trapped the unsuspecting target in a triangle formation. Naruto would first weakened the target and then it would be Sakura's turn, to kill, behead, and dispose, with the help of Hinata, of the body properly, as should a hunter-nin's job should be.

Naruto quickly disabled the target and Sakura went in for kill and quickly gave the man a, somewhat, slow painful death that involved senbon needles and the male reproductive system. Sakura was chackling evilly by the time Hinata just decided the quickly decapitate and kill the poor man.

Sakura suddenly stopped laughing as Hinata killed the man and said, "Hey, that's my job."

"Yeah, well, you took too long, and it's Naruto's job to disable the target, besides, we're here the assassinate and dispose of the target, not torture it slowly and painfully, that's Ibiki-san and Anko-chan's job to do. Besides, we probably wouldn't need any information from this pathetic excuse for a missing-nin," Hinata sighed as she sealed the decapitated head in a scroll and went to work, disposing of the body correctly. Sakura soon joined in, mumbling about someone ruining her fun.

Naruto sighed, he really had a sadistic captain. Even though he has seen her do this to males and females countless times, less to females, he can't get used to it. He feared about his own reproductive parts.

The two medic-nin soon disposed of the body and got ready to go on their way. It was on their way back to the village that they sensed something coming from their right and smirked, so this was the real missing-nin. They quickly got into the same formation and trapped the target.

It seemed that the target had observed them from afar and knew what they were going to do next, at least he thought he did. Instead of Naruto coming to attack him first, Hinata came and took the initiative and shot a quick, chakra-engulfed open-palm to the chest, puncturing the left lung and breaking most of the left ribs.

Hinata then twisted around and hit the back of the neck, paralyzing the target for just a few moments as Naruto, with a sword purely made out of chakra sliced the neck, detaching the had from the body, causing blood to splatter all over them.

"Che, you said that I was sadistic, your flashy," Sakura said as she caught the flying head and sealed it in the mission scroll.

"Whatever, at least I get the job done quickly and correctly," Naruto muttered as he watched as the beheaded body collapse on the ground in front of Hinata, who was ready to repeat the process from earlier as Sakura joined her again.

"Like I said, this missing-nin was pathetic, underestimating us from our appearance, psh," Hinata muttered as she did her job.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, we've seen more pathetic ones before. Remember another one from Suna who tried to hide in the river even though he didn't know how to preserve oxygen in his lungs properly and ended up drowning himself?" Sakura said as she shook her head and the others laughed, and that one was also supposed to be an A-Rank missing-nin, sheesh, how do they rank missing-nin these days?

"Yeah, that one was just plain retarded," Naruto said as he wiped off the splattered blood on his face.

Hinata and Sakura soon finished and burned the body along with the scroll that had the "head" from before.

"Let's go home, I'm tired of these retarded over-ranked missing-nins," Hinata said as she got ready to leave, packing up her equipment, as Sakura finished packing up her equipment and they leaped off into the trees, heading back to the village.

By the time they had returned to the village, it was only 9:00, three hours since their departure. They greeted the same gate guards and headed towards the Hokage Tower.

As they entered the Hokage's office, they were greeted with the sight of the rest of Team Eight and the rest of Team Seven, asking where the rest of their team was. The senseis had somewhat of an idea where their students were but didn't expect them to have them on such a high-rank mission as they spotted the gold on the scroll, that Sakura handed it to the Hokage.

The others were shocked, their teammates were on a high-rank mission without them? What was going on?

"Mission successful, you'll find the proof in the scroll," Sakura reported as all three of them bowed, still partially covered in the splattered blood.

The three of them turned to face their new teammates and blinked rapidly for a bit, "Ne, sensei, what are you doing here?" Sakura questioned.

"We're just arrived, along with the rest of Team Eight, we were wondering where the rest of our team was," Kakashi replied, looking over the three of them, noting the blood and connected it with the gold trimmed scroll that Sakura had handed the Hokage, assassination mission, ka?

"Ne, ne, ne, Hinata-chan, why are you covered in blood? That's not yours is it?" Hinata's teammate, Inuzuka Kiba asked as he looked her over.

Hinata twitched a bit on the inside but had a sweet smile on the outside, "You don't have to worry about this, it's not my blood, and I was on a mission, if you haven't noticed," Hinata replied.

Sasuke sharply turned to look at his sensei, why were they sent on a mission without them? And who was the other girl?

"Che, Sasuke, your probably wondering why we were on a mission without you and Kakashi-sensei, right?" Naruto smirked as he saw that look in his eyes.

Sasuke growled a bit on the inside and nodded, curiosity being greater than his pride at the moment.

"Well, Sakura-teichou, Hinata-chan, and I are in a special team, I'll just leave it at that," Naruto said as he left the prodigy wanted for more information.

"Excuse us as we leave to change into clean attire," Sakura said as the three of them bowed to each of their sensei.

Kurenai nodded and said, "Hinata, meet up at our training grounds after you have changed." Hinata nodded in response as she left with the other two.

"Naruto, Sakura, meet up here after your done," Kakashi said as the mentioned two nodded their heads in response as they went through the double doors.

The three of them soon parted their different ways as Sakura and Hinata went towards their direction and Naruto went to his. Sakura and Hinata soon arrived back home and went to their rooms.

Sakura changed into the same thing, she was like one of those anime people, having so many of the same outfit, it's just that this one looked fabulous on her. It was a red, square-neck, spaghetti-strap tank top over a long sleeve, square-neck, cropped mesh shirt, where the edge of the sleeves extended over the top of her hands, having loops that went on her thumb, middle finger, and pinky. The tank top was empire waist as it was tight over the bosom and loose and flowy over the abdomen and waist. Short, pink, elbow warmers covered the afore-mentioned parts. For the bottom half, she wore black spandex mid-thigh-length shorts under a red ¾-length mini-skirt with slits up the both sides for better movement. Red bunched up knitted leg warmers cover her calves and the top part of her feet which wore black-strapped-ninja heels.

She loved this outfit, not only did it look good on her, it was also easy to move around and she was also able to hide many things in those leg warmers of hers. She also had an entirely black version of this outfit, it was sooo sexy.

Sakura stepped out of her room to see Hinata exit, in the same outfit from before, just cleaner. Hinata was also like one of those anime characters, having so many of the same outfit, because of the same reason, it made her look hot.

Hinata wore the same top as Sakura but in black and instead of a spaghetti-strap tank, she wore a halter top in the same style. Also instead of the whole mesh shirt, she just had arm warmers in the same mesh material, that also covered her hands in the same fashion that Sakura's did. She generally didn't wear the elbow warmers and instead wore a thin, yet warm, navy blue jacket over it, usually zipped up halfway. Instead of the mini skirt and shorts pair, she wore black cargo caprice that went down to just below her knees and were tied at the bottom. She still wore the same kind of heels. Hinata usually had all of her things up the sleeve or back of her jacket or in the many pockets of her pants.

"Looking hot as usual," Sakura commented as she laughed and Hinata responded after giggling, "Of course, same to you." The two adopted sisters started laughing as they walked down the hall and down the stairs, on their way to meet up with their new teams.

Hinata arrived at the training grounds as she watched her other teammates warm up. She walked up to Kurenai and bowed to her as she waited for instructions. Kurenai turned to see last student head bowed and told her to join her other two teammates in warming up and watched as she quickly joined the other two.

What was she going to do with her? Hinata was obviously on a level way higher than the other two and possibly higher than herself. Will the others be able to catch up to her or at least be sufficient enough to work together properly? The team was already doing well but it was mostly due to the fact of Hinata's skill and her ability to work well with others. What interested Kurenai more was that teichou of that student of hers, Haruno Sakura.

What Kurenai could see was that Sakura was really skillful, on the same level or maybe even higher than that of Hinata's, and her leadership skills were outstanding enough to command such a team. She felt like there was more to come as all of the rookies and the special team grew older and accumulated more experience.

Kurenai sighed, she could already tell that these nine rookies were going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

Sakura entered the Hokage's office and saw that Naruto had gotten there before her.

"Che, Sakura-teichou, you're soooo slow," Naruto said in a sarcastic voice and winced in pain as Sakura punched him on the top of his head.

"Mou mou, I have such a mean captain," Naruto muttered, "Oh shut up," Sakura said as walked up to Naruto and stood next to him on his left, on his right was Sasuke, and on his right was Kakashi-sensei.

"So, is everyone here?" Sarutobi asked as he looked over the four of them. Saurobi continued, "First, I want to congratulate on completing your first high-ranked mission successfully," Sarutobi looked at Naruto and Sakura and then added, "As the new Team 7."

All four of them bowed in respect of the compliment and then looked at Sarutobi as he took a deep breath and the said, "As you all know, the Chuunin Exams are coming up. They are held every six months and this time, it is Konoha's turn to host the Chuunin Exams."

Sakura and Naruto soon got an excited gleam in their eyes, Sasuke had a flash of excitement but quickly covered it up.

"Well, it is time to start nominating teams, I have talked to the rest of the Jounin-senseis and they have already nominated teams that they thought were worthy to participate in the exams. Also, I have talked your instructor, and he would like me to tell you that you have been nominated to participate in the Chuunin Exams, along with the rest of the rookies. Now, all you have to do is decided whether or not you want this and turn in these forms to me by the end of the week," Sarutobi said as he withdrew three slips of paper from his desk and handed it to the three Genin.

"Hell, I don't think that you even need to wait until the end of the week to get our forms," Sakura said as she and Naruto quickly filled out theirs and put them away, having to wait and get their guardians' signature to be able to turn it in.

Sasuke smirked and nodded, those two were right, the Hokage didn't need to wait to get their forms. The Hokage chuckled happily at their enthusiasm, he knew for sure that this was going to happen. Now all he had to do was wait for the others to turn in their form. The Chunnin Exams were going to be held in about a month.

"So, that is all that I have to tell you," the Hokage said as all four of them bowed and then the three students turned to look at their sensei, waiting for instructions and received them as they were to meet up at their training ground in half an hour.

As the others left, Sakura and Naruto felt as if the Hokage was calling for them. Once they walked out of the Hokage tower and watched as their other two teammates went their separate ways, they walked back up to the office and stood in front of the Hokage.

"As perceptive as always, I'm pretty sure that Kakashi might have sensed a bit of that, but I'm also pretty sure that the young Uchiha didn't. Well enough of that, here is your payment for the mission. Good work, I can always rely on you three, the Special Team," the Hokage said as he handed the two of them pretty thick envelopes. The two of them walked forward and bowed as they received their payment. They were sure that the Hokage was going to call Hinata in sooner or later. As if on cue, the door opened and in came Hinata, as quiet as always.

"Hai, Hokage-sama?" Hinata questioned as she spotted the two envelopes that her two Special teammates were holding and caught the drift of one of the reasons as to why she was called there.

"Now that all three of us are here, what did you want to talk to us about?" Sakura asked casually as Sarutobi laughed a bit and said "As keen as always."

"Well, what I wanted to talk to you about is that in this exam, I'm pretty sure that Kurenai-sensei has talked to you about this," Sarutobi asked as he saw Hinata nod, "there will be many strong ninjas, rookies or not, there will be plenty of them. I know for a fact that all three of you are as equally as strong as one of our mid-level Jounins but I'm sure that there will be stronger opponents in this exam, so I hope that you three make it through to the finals. Show those people who have shunned you, abused you, berated you, and most of all, left you that you all have become strong."

The three of them had a serious expression mixed in with a pained one as they remembered what had happened to them before they met their adoptive parents and went on the training trip to become strong. One would never be able to forget what had happened even though most of it was a blur by now, having been pretty young when they were taken away.

Sarutobi cleared his throat to ease the built up tension in the room and to obtain their attention once again. "But, to end on a happier note, it brings you one step closer to proving those people wrong. I swear, I know that I shouldn't be saying this right now but I'm pretty sure that you three are going to make it to the next level in the ninja hierarchy. Sooner or later, your going to be one of the candidates to be appointed Jounin and then the ANBU exams. You guys will grow up really fast before our eyes, you all already have."

"Excuse me Hokage-sama, I dearly appreciate your support but it is about time that Naruto and I go met with the rest of our other team," Sakura bowed low as she and Naruto left the office after a nod from the Hokage.

"I'm sorry to keep you, Hinata, you may go now," Sarutobi said as he watched the young Hyuuga bow and leaned back into his chair. These children seriously were growing up too fast for anyone in their age group to catch up. Who knew that it was going to be like that? Both of his students had good eyes, they were probably able to foresee all of these accomplishments and improvements. He was glad that he let his students adopt there kids. This was what made him proud about them, they knew how to look for one's potential and pull it out to it's fullest.

A/N: Well, now that you have read my latest chapter, I hope that you liked it and please review. I don't really have much to say right now, but sorry that it took so long for me to update, I was dried of ideas, none were coming out. I was pretty fortunate to be able to finish this chapter without completely dieing of ideas, I might have had a drought somewhere in the middle or scattered around but I did the rain dance long enough to have it come back to me. Well, I hope that you liked it and please review! Every writer loves reviews!


	9. Chapter 9 Ridiculous Game of Tag

A/N: Finally, I'm ALIVE, and back with yet another chapter. Sorry for the wait! I hope that you guys like this chapter and please review!!!

Chapter 9 – Ridiculous Game of Tag

All three of the rookie teams decided not to take any unnecessary missions for the next four weeks to get ready for the Chuunin Exams.

"Hell YEAH!" Sakura exclaimed in excitement, the three of them, the Special Team, were over at Hinata's and Sakura's house to celebrate their acceptance into the Chunnin Exams on their first try.

"I'm happy also, sheesh, just not as crazy," Hinata said as she drank some iced green tea.

"I know, I know, teichou, I never knew you were this crazy," Naruto said as he slurped down some ramen.

"Che, of course you've known that I was this crazy, just not in a situation like this, never had the opportunity to be crazy in a situation like this," Sakura said as she thought of any other situation that was like this, nope, none.

"Oh whatever, I still remember when you were a quiet, shy girl," Tsunade said as she took a swig of sake.

"Oh pahlease, how long ago was that?" Sakura asked as she munched on some fried pickle chips.

"That was around the time that we adopted you and left the village to go on the trip," Shizune said as she took the alcohol away from her sensei.

"Che, I wasn't the only quiet and shy turned crazy, this one here, also went through quite a transformation," Sakura said as she nudged Hinata with her elbow.

"Whatever, I'm still less crazy," Hinata said as she ate some dango.

"I don't know about you two but I was a trickster from the very beginning," Naruto bragged as he ate some more ramen.

"You got that right, brat, do you know how troublesome it was to train this brat? At least he was willing and hard-working," Jiraiya said as he ate some dango.

"Mou mou, I wonder how the exams are going to be like," Sakura wondered.

"Hmmm, just for the hell of it, we won't tell you, so you have to prepare yourself in every way possible. That's how life is, you never know what hits you until you see it yourself," Jiraiya said, snickering for a bit first.

"Yeah, I would have to agree with that idiot for once. Besides, who knows how much the Chuunin Exams have changed since we took it," Tsunade as she sulked for a bit as Shizune successfully kept the sake away from her.

"Sheesh, what mean senseis we have," Sakura said as Hinata giggled a bit and said, "But it's true, it's better for us anyways, allows us to overcome it ourselves."

"Hmph, still so mean," Sakua muttered. "They're all against me, I know it!"

"If we were really against you, we would've gotten you way earlier, trust me," Naruto said as he grinned an evil smile.

"Sometimes I forget that side of you. You've grown so much it kind of became hidden but at the most unexpected times it comes out and explodes in your face!," Tsunade said.

"Yeah, sometimes it seems like it disappears and isn't there anymore but when you least expect it, it comes out at full blast!" Sakura said.

"Che, whatever," Naruto said as he pouted and everyone laughed at him.

**The Next Day – Starting Four Weeks Training **

Team Seven met up at the same red bridge near the same training field at the same time with the same sensei, still late the same amount of time -sigh-, nothing new, will anything new happen to them?

Kakashi finally arrived at the scene two hours later, book in hand, nose in book, nothing new, but that was until he suddenly took a kunai out and launched it at Sasuke who quickly dodged and took out his own and got ready to attack.

Sakura and Naruto quickly got their weapons ready and waited for the next attack. The three of them watched their sensei as he looked over the three of them, sighed and put his book away.

"The three of you had slower reactions then I expected," Kakashi said as he sighed again.

"How would we know that we would get attacked by our sensei?" Sakura retorted.

"Always be on guard, even around those of your comrades. It's always good to trust those you're working with but it's best to always be on guard. You never know what will happed to you in the shinobi world," Kakashi said.

"So basically you're telling us to trust our comrades but also be on guard if one of your best friends suddenly decide to kill you," Naruto said in a sarcastic manner.

"Yeah, basically," Kakashi said as he shrugged. "Another thing, we need to work on your reaction time, the time that it takes you to get your weapons out."

"How would we do that, sensei?" Sakura asked, curious.

"Simple, I would tell you but then again that wouldn't help you, so let's just say, expect surprise attacks, even from those that you've known forever," Kakashi said with an eye-smile.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Sakura asked.

"You'll see, now, let's work on chakra control. I know that the three of you have mastered tree-walking so let's play a game of tag," Kakashi said as he chuckled.

Sakura looked wide-eyed and said, "Are you kidding me? You better be kidding me."

"I'm not kidding, and this isn't like some regular game of tag. First of all, the person who's "it" will be wearing this neck band," Kakashi said as he held up this choker-like contraption, "which limits the amount of chakra that can be used, if they use it up, it'll shock them. Second of all, we'll be running on trees at least 50 feet above the ground, no one can touch the ground. Third of all, those who are running away can only do a certain thing, like for example, Sakura, you showed us last time that you can do flips along the tree then you would only be able to do flips to run away. Sounds fun, doesn't it?" Kakashi said with an eye-smile

The three of them sweatdropped, how the hell was this supposed to be fun?

"So, all of us have to pick out from this bag, what they're going to do," Kakashi said as he whipped out a cloth bag and held it in Sakura's direction as she stuck her hand in first and picked out a piece of folded paper, then it was Naruto, then Sasuke, and then Kakashi himself.

Each of them unfolded their papers and looked inside. Sakura's eyebrow twitched, she wasn't "it" but to run away she had to hop...like a frog. Who the hell thought of these things?!!! Naruto punched the air as he looked at his, he was "it." Sasuke opened his and saw that to run away he had to....waddle like a duck, he was going to kill Kakashi afterwards if this didn't help him increase his control. Actually, he'll kill him even if it did help him. Kakashi felt the killer intent from his student and chuckled, let's see what he got, he didn't even know what they had, they were chakra enhanced pieces of paper that changed what it said inside, seems like, to be able to run away he had to....fly...like...a bird...

Kakashi rubbed his eyes for a bit to see if he was reading it right. Yup, he was reading it right...WHO THE HELL THOUGHT OF THESE KINDS OF THINGS?!!! (A/N: I DIIIIIIDDDDDD, lol, XP) Then he looked towards the bottom of the paper and saw that it gave instructions as to how he was going to do it. He had to walk a bit bent over while flapping his arms like a bird's wings, at least 75 times a minute. Kakashi's eyes bulged out, when did this also become weight training? He looked to the side of the instructions and saw that it had a seal for storing things on it. He bit his thumb and swiped it across the small seal and out popped to metal wrist bands.

It seems like he had to wear them on his wrists and it had two purposes, as a weight and as a a counter as to how many times he flapped his arms. If he didn't do enough the weight would slowly increase...he asks again to Kami...WHEN THE HELL DID THIS ALSO BECOME STRENGTH TRAINING?!!!

Was it only doing this to him cause he was the teacher? He looked to Sakura and saw that she too had something to put on, it was like what he had but it was on her ankles, Sasuke had something also but he had to put his on his shoulders. It seemed like Naruto was "it", so Kakashi put the choker on him.

Naruto adjusted to the limited chakra and tested a bit of it to see how much he was allowed, he was allowed barely enough to make ten shadow clones, this was SOOO NOT cool.

The three Genins of Team Seven released some killer intent and directed it towards their so called sensei, ready to attack at any given moment.

Kakashi felt the killer intent from his team and sweatdropped, he really needed to tell them that it wasn't him that thought of these things.

Kakashi opened his mouth to try and explain but the other three glared at him, he sweatdropped again, he'll tell them later when they have calmed down.

Kakashi cleared his throat to get their attention, it's not like he didn't already have their attention, it was to tell them that they were about to start.

"Follow me, we're going to the playing field," Kakashi said as he started walking into the forest that was at the edge of their training grounds.

They finally stopped in a small clearing that was surrounded by trees that were probably over 100 feet high or maybe taller.

Kakashi then took a kunai out and threw it behind him, it was lodged deeply into a tree at a seemingly random place. But Kakashi explained, "That is the 50 feet mark, go anywhere below that, I'll be sure to have a punishment for you."

The three of them nodded, it just made things more interesting.

Kakashi walked up to a tree and started walking up on it, the other three followed suit and soon all four of them were above the kunai that Kakashi had planted.

"Oh yeah, I forgot got to say this but for the first 30 seconds after the game starts, the runners are able to run using their feet while standing upright to get as far away as they can and the person that is "it" has to do 50 push-ups before they are able to go after the runners. After I say 'start' and all the runners have started, after 30 seconds, I'll set off green sparks into the sky, signaling that it is the end of the first thirty seconds. Soon after, if they are done, the person that is "it" will set off blue sparks into the sky after they have finished their 50 push-ups to signal to the runners that he is off to get them. Then if someone is caught, then, red sparks should be sent into the sky to signal the end of the game. Are we clear on that?" Kakashi asked as he looked to the other three as they nodded.

"Okay, ready. Set. Go!" Kakashi said as he, Sasuke, and Sakura dashed off, and Naruto started his push-ups on the tree vertically.

Kakashi was running away as he mentally counted 30 seconds in his head, '...25...26...27...'

Kakashi threw a kunai into the air with a green explosive tag attached to it, and immediately changed his direction, and location. '...28...29...30!' Kakashi mentally counted as he heard the explosive tag go off and saw green sparks explode into the sky as he looked up.

After he landed on a branch and crouched down a bit he started flapping his arms like a bird.

**With Sakura**

Sakura saw the green sparks in the sky and landed on a branch and crouched down like a frog and stayed there, ready to hop like a frog to escape at any given moment.

**With Sasuke**

Sasuke cursed as he saw the green sparks in the sky and crouched down like a duck, with his arms at his side, fingers laced behind his back, he waddled around a bit to test out how it was and thought that it wasn't all that bad.

**With Naruto**

'...39...40...41...' Naruto counted in his head as he saw the green sparks in the air. '...42...43...44...45...46...47...48...49...50!'

Naruto smirked as he stood up, stretched out a bit and thought about it, who should he go after? Kakashi just had to flap his arms like a bird meaning his was still able to run with his feet, Sakura had to hop like a frog which meant that she would be able to cover more distance as she jumped, the only one left was Sasuke.

Naruto almost forgot as he took out a kunai with a blue explosive tag attached to it and threw it into the air and watched as blue sparks exploded into the sky.

Naruto grinned like a manic, Sasuke had to waddle around like a duck. Naruto started snickering, this was a site that he had to see. Naruto then ran off into the direction that he saw Sasuke run off to and followed his scent. All three of them might have been able to cover their tracks by hiding them or hiding their chakra but Naruto had heightened senses, meaning that he could track them out by their scent; something that only the rain could get rid of.

Naruto jumped around as he followed Sasuke's scent, and made sure that he saved enough chakra for the big chase.

**With Kakashi**

He saw the blue sparks in the air meaning that Naruto was done with his push-ups and was going to come and get them. Kakashi thought of the possibilities of being chased first and thought that it was around 25% since he was able to run with his feet. So, thinking that Naruto was smart, Kakashi thought that he would not be chased after first.

Kakashi also thought that it was about a 25% chance that Sakura was going to be chased first, since she would be able to cover quite a lot of distance 'cause she had to hop like a frog.

That would leave Sasuke with a 50% chance of being chased first since he had to waddle like a duck. Kakashi held back his laugh as he jumped towards the direction that Sasuke was in. He had to see this, the Last Uchiha, waddling around like a duck, .!!! No one in their right minds would miss this chance.

**With Sakura**

Sakura weighed out the possibilities of being chased first and found that it was quite unlikely, along with Kakashi, the most likely would be Sasuke.

Sakura started snickering, she needed to see this, it would be perfect blackmail, XP!

Sakura started hopping in the direction that Sasuke went in and hoped to get their in time to see him being chased by Naruto.

**With Sasuke**

Sasuke already knew that he was going to be chased first and tried his best to cover his tracks and hide his chakra, but what his didn't know was that Naruto was able to follow scents.

So he was completely caught by surprise when Naruto burst through the canopy of trees up above and landed on a branch not too far away from his.

Sasuke cursed under his breathe, how was Naruto able to find him so quickly?

He looked up to see Naruto's expression and cursed again, that idiot was grinning like a Cheshire cat!

Sasuke watched as Naruto was about to charge at him and started to waddle his way away.

It seemed strange to him that he didn't feel Naruto's presence coming any closer and found his answer when he heard the idiot burst out laughing.

"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" Naruto couldn't help himself, this was just too funny. The avenging Uchiha, waddling around like a duck!!!

Naruto was rolling around on the branch that he was on, hands clutching his side. Damn, this was hilarious!!!

A vein popped out in Sasuke's forehead, he was definitely going to kill the idiot and his so-called sensei when this was over. Sasuke reached into his hip pouch and took out a shuriken and launched it at the laughing idiot, intending to make him serious.

Naruto stopped laughing just in time to catch the shuriken that was launched at him. Naruto stood up holding the razor sharp star and his expression changed into that of a predators, he was now ready to catch his prey.

Naruto had a smirk on his face, eyes slightly squinted with a mischievous tint in it, he knew that Sasuke wanted him to get serious and now his was.

Naruto threw the shuriken at Sasuke to miss and just graze his cheek, this was to show Sasuke that he got what he wanted.

Sasuke now had a light gash on his cheek, he smirked, the idiot was now serious. He started waddling away to give himself some distance from the idiot and was not pleased to know that Naruto had already covered the distance easily.

"Shit," Sasuke cursed as he started scaling up a tree, pushed off, and landed on another tree, hoping to somehow run away.

It didn't help as much as he wanted and reached into his hip pouch, took out a smoke bomb, and threw it towards Naruto.

Naruto's eye's widened as he covered his eyes and mouth as the bomb exploded right in front of him.

Sasuke was satisfied as he was able to create some distance between him and the idiot.

Sasuke continued waddling away when he heard clicking sounds. Sasuke stopped, was it a bomb that Naruto or the others planted beforehand? As he stopped, the clicking sounds stopped. As he started, the clicking sounds started.

Sasuke didn't have enough time to ponder on what it was when he felt Naruto's chakra quickly gaining on him.

Sasuke cursed, he was distracted by the sounds and couldn't create more distance.

Naruto was now pissed, it seemed that the smoke bomb not only caused him to loose sight of the duck it also faltered his sense of smell. Now he was really serious. Naruto dashed through the forest, faster than before and was finally able to detect some of the chakra traces that Sasuke had left behind.

Naruto charged in the direction that he felt it and soon caught sight of the his soon-to-be-dead duck up ahead. Naruto also heard the clicking that had caused Sasuke to become distracted and smirked, he knew exactly what it was.

That meant that another prey was near but he was too focused on the duck to get to the scheming frog or failed bird that were lurking nearby and watching the show.

Naruto finally got close to the duck who was still distracted by the clicking sounds and quickly hid his chakra. He didn't hide his chakra when he was running here 'cause it was a hunter's technique to create fear in the hunted.

Sasuke cursed, one moment he felt Naruto's chakra quickly become stronger and stronger, the next he couldn't find it at all. Shit, he needed to calm down, with Naruto doing that had caused his adrenaline to start running.

Naruto checked how much chakra he had left and found out that he had about a fourth left of the original amount, that running a moment ago had cost him quite a lot. He needed to be careful from now on.

Naruto watched Sasuke and took out a kunai, waiting for an opening. Naruto finally saw it when Sasuke leaped from one branch to another.

Naruto quickly threw the kunai and watched as it pierced the part of Sasuke's shirt that flew up when he jumped. The kunai carried Sasuke to the nearest tree and was lodged deeply into the trunk.

Sasuke wasn't in a position to be able to take the kunai out since he was hanging there by the back of his shirt.

Naruto then appeared out of nowhere and punched Sasuke in the jaw, that was for messing with his sense of smell. Naruto then landed on a nearby branch and threw a kunai with a red explosive tag attached to it and watched as red sparks exploded into the sky.

Once the sparks exploded, the weights and collar poofed away.

Finally, it was the end of the game.

Sakura and Kakashi came out from where they were hiding and stood up properly, Sakura's thighs were aching from jumping like a frog and Kakashi's arms weren't any better.

Once Sasuke was released from his hanging position, the four of them jumped down to the forest floor.

"Shit, this is one crazy game, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura said as she massaged her thighs.

"Hmm, since that was a bit more intense than I thought, that will be the end of today's training, you can go home now," Kakashi said, he also needed to go home to put some ice on his sore arms.

Sasuke shoved his hands into his pocket and walked away, Kakashi shunshined away, hoping to get home faster, and Sakura and Naruto just walked back in the direction of their training field, hoping to have a spar with each other.

That was one crazy ass game but for some reason, they were itching to play it again.

A/N: I'm finally back!!! Sorry for the wait, I forgot all about this chapter that I started, I was working on another story for Gakuen Alice. If you guys know the manga, then please check out my story!!! Well, I hope that you liked this chapter, and please review!!!


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